Mobile Deal in Myanmar Elicits Anger Over Religion

The Myanmar government awarded major telecommunications contracts to two foreign companies, a milestone in the country’s opening up to the world that was immediately tainted by religious hatred.

Hours after the announcement, a monk who is one of the leaders of a radical nationalist Buddhist movement called for a boycott of one of the two companies because it is based in Qatar, a Muslim country. “Did the government have such little choice?” the monk, Ashin Wimala, a leader of the 969 movement, said. “Why did they award this to a Muslim company?” The company, Ooredoo, won a 15-year concession to build and operate mobile phone networks virtually from scratch, as did Telenor Mobile Communications of Norway. The networks are crucially needed in Myanmar, where less than 10 percent of people have a mobile phone. That is a startlingly low number at a time when mobile phones are ubiquitous even in the poorest corners of the world. In neighboring Laos, a country with similar levels of grinding poverty, mobile phone penetration is 87 percent. But in a country that is 90 percent Buddhist and where anti-Muslim sermons and hate speech appear to have fueled rampaging lynch mobs, the award to Ooredoo drew fury.