Dissident Spotlight: Didier Nusbaumer
Didier Nusbaumer was arrested for allegedly insulting Buddhism, showing that even supposedly peaceful religions can inspire legal action against reasonable criticisms.
In 2021, the democratic leader of Myanmar was overthrown in a military coup. The regime has cracked down on all kinds of dissent, including criticisms of the state’s religion.
Myanmar is 90% Buddhist, and its reputation for being a peaceful religion masks the atrocities that have been committed in its name. Zen Buddhism was one of the major religions of imperial Japan during World War II, though it was sidelined in favor of State Shinto. In the early 2020s, Myanmar was the site of attempted genocide by Buddhists against the Rohingya Muslim population.
In August 2023, Myanmar’s military junta arrested Swiss film director Didier Nusbaumer along with 13 other people for a movie Nusbaumer produced and posted on YouTube.
Don’t Expect Anything! is about a 12-year-old girl who discovers she was a “spiritual master” in a past life. The movie follows her as she rediscovers the spiritual lessons of her previous life. The 12-year-old girl who played the protagonist was among those arrested.
However, the movie’s YouTube description gives one inspiring message despite the junta’s oversensitivity:
We got 1½ YEARS OF PRISON for that movie, because a scene was misinterpreted.
No Religion is Safe From Extremism
The arrests were reportedly because the film depicted Buddhist monks in an unflattering light. Which scene is unclear, but anything showing a Buddhist monk with less than the desired amount of purity could have set the overly sensitive junta off.
Ironically, military groups that purport to protect their country’s religions make deities appear weak. How could an all-powerful god require the protection of a petty group of humans?
Instead, military groups like these terrorize ordinary people and appropriate god-like powers over life and death for themselves.
No matter how peaceful a religion may seem, it’s as vulnerable to being hijacked for earthly purposes as any other. It’s only a matter of time before someone convinces a subset of Jains that one group of people doesn’t count as “life.”