Numbers are important in explaining political issues and interpreting election results but they are rarely used to identify a person’s political affiliation, much less a person’s religion. In Southeast Asia, however, where numerology has retained its appeal among the masses, numbers are increasingly being used by politicians and religious leaders in support of a particular cause, ideology, or candidacy. 

In Burma, the use of numbers as religious symbols has led to some disastrous consequences. Since last year, the 969 symbol was adopted by some Buddhist monks and quickly became the symbol for a fringe pro-Buddhist movement, which urges Buddhists to only shop at Buddhist-owned stores and avoid fraternizing – marrying, hiring or selling to – the nation’s Muslim minority. Unfortunately, the divisive movement sparked an intense anti-Muslim hate campaign that led in some cases to sectarian violence. 

This is really tragic considering the “969” symbol was originally intended to promote peace. The numerological significance of the figure comes from the Buddhist tradition in which the Three Jewels (Tiratana) are made up of 24 attributes: nine special attributes of the Lord Buddha, six core Buddhist teachings, and the nine attributes of monkhood. 

Its main proponent is the controversial Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu (aka “Burmese bin Laden”), who has been accused of spreading anti-Muslim propaganda under the guise of protecting Buddhism. 

Stickers, flags, CDs, and other paraphernalia bearing the 969 symbol are being sold throughout Burma. Further, consumers are urged to buy only at market stalls that have the 969 symbol. The aim is clearly to drive out Muslim vendors and traders who are unfairly being blamed by many Buddhists for secretly aiming to dominate the local economy. Muslims compose about four percent of Burma’s population. 

This extreme form of Buddhist nationalism sees Islam as the enemy to be vanquished. In yet another numerological twist, the 969 movement is suspicious of the 786 symbol, used by Muslims in South Asia. Some believe that 786 cryptically points to a Muslim conspiracy to achieve world domination in the 21st century, since 7+8+6 add up to 21. However, this is a misreading of the symbol since 786 refers to the Quranic phrase “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Ever Merciful” whose numeric values add up to 786. In fact, Burma Muslims have long used the symbol to identify halal restaurants.

Perhaps Muslim merchants’ practice of putting the 786 symbol inside their shops infuriated many Buddhists who responded by supporting the 969 campaign. 

Since last year, riots between Buddhists and Muslims have erupted in many parts of Burma, displacing more than 150,000 people. In total, estimates place the number of internally displaced persons in the country at 450,000. Directly or indirectly, supporters of the 969 and 786 campaigns have blood on their hands for distorting the peaceful doctrines of their respective religions and for inciting their followers to commit violence. 

Unfortunately, Burma is not the only nation in the region plagued by politically incendiary numbers. But unlike in Burma, such numbers have not yet resulted in widespread violence.

In Malaysia, the number 505 with black background, or “Black 505”, has become a symbol of protest against the massive electoral fraud allegedly carried out by the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition in the country’s May 5 general election.

In the past week, thousands gathered in Kuala Lumpur and other major cities to protest the election results. Protesters used the 505 symbol to draw more people to the movement. A growing number of Malaysian internet users are also adopting the symbol on social networks to show their support for the cause.

And speaking of elections, the Philippines recently conducted its midterm polls, which saw positive results for candidates linked to the administration in power. Since 2010, election candidates have been using campaign posters and other election materials that bear their pictures, names, parties, political slogans, and – yet again – numbers on the election ballot.

Because of poll automation, voters need to remember not just the names but also the numbers of candidates on the official ballot. The result is the printing of election posters prominently displaying both crucial bits of data. Some may find it odd and confusing that politicians are asking voters to pledge their support for a number. 

Indeed, numbers often overwhelm us. Benign by themselves, if they are co-opted for political or religious purposes – as seen in Southeast Asia – they can create more difficult, if not puzzling equations.

A push towards massive offshore refining pontoons for processing crude and liquefied natural gas (LNG) is gaining momentum and forcing governments – which had pinned their economic development plans to traditional oil and gas jobs – to rethink their strategies.

It’s a global phenomena but one that is making its mark in Southeast Asia where high crude prices have improved the economic viability of offshore oil and gas fields in areas that are difficult to reach and hamstrung by underdevelopment and sometimes difficult politics.

This was the case with Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines and East Timor. As the boom in oil prices gathered pace, less economical fields became viable and governments hastily opened their doors, exposing their workforces to companies that had previously preferred to work with established sources for oil and gas.

But infrastructure – roads, ports, railways, facilities for refining and storage, and a trained workforce – is costly. Further, the engineering realities of building a pipeline across deep sea trenches – sometimes thousands of meters deep – are prohibitive, particularly as oil prices fell dramatically from record highs. 

Some governments, like Australia and Indonesia, are accepting the realities and experimenting with offshore refining, which eliminates the need for pipelines and is ideal for accessing resources in remote areas. Other governments are considering this option, but some like East Timor are not keen.

Built on barges, a floating pontoon is bigger than an aircraft carrier and capable of refining oil and freezing LNG at minus-162 degrees Celsius needed for export. Shell is constructing the world’s first such pontoon for use at its operations at the Prelude and Concerto fields in Australia’s North West Shelf. Other contractors are also rethinking their strategies.

Escalating costs have forced Woodside Petroleum to abandon AUS $100 billion worth of projects, including plans to build an AUS $50 billion LNG export facility near Broome. BHP Billiton has meanwhile cancelled two plans worth a combined AUS $50 billion at Olympic Dam in South Australia and Port Hedland in West Australia.

Woodside is now considering its floating LNG (FLNG) options. Inpex Corp is also considering an FLNG project in the Abadi gas field in Indonesia’s Arafura Sea. Its geographical make-up is similar to the Greater Sunrise gas field in East Timor, where Woodside must overcome the enormous depths of the Timor Trough. It also wants FLNG deployed here but East Timorese officials have balked and remain keen to construct traditional onshore operations and provide well trained jobs for the country’s population.

For companies, the potential financial benefits of FLNG technology far outweigh the initial outlays. FLNG also substantially lowers lead times, poses much less of an environmental risk and has a lower impact on indigenous people living ashore.

“This is likely to position floating LNG well as the market becomes increasingly competitive and could ultimately crowd out some conventional developments,” a Macquarie Research paper on the Australian energy sector noted.

But this doesn’t amount to the type of development promised by politicians who have promised an El Dorado of downstream industries that would prosper off the backs of the offshore ventures. This has put East Timor and its future earnings on a precipice.

Last week officials in Dili alleged that Australia had engaged in espionage and did not act in good faith during 2004 negotiations on a treaty for Sunrise’s development. It was the latest twist in efforts to invalidate the royalty sharing treaty between Australia and East Timor. Dili wants fresh arbitration but Australia insists the treaty still stands.

This – combined with differences in the use of FLNG, the development of fire and ice technologies and the advent of fracking – is making East Timor a less desirable destination for the oil and gas industry. Other countries in the region that have pinned their hopes on developing an oil and gas industry are no doubt watching this closely.

Indochinese governments have faced fierce criticisms from their own people and abroad over land grabbing in recent years. But the response from leaders in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos has been collective lip service while big corporations were allowed to go about their business.

Complex corporate structures layered by a myriad of red tape and rigid bureaucracies have conspired to hide the inner and sometimes illegal dealings that have resulted in thousands of farmers losing their land or being forced to sell at a pittance.

However, Rubber Barons, a report and film released this morning by the London-based environmental watchdog Global Witness, has gone a long way towards unraveling some of the corporate mysteries surrounding land grabbing by rubber producers in Vietnam.

According to the report, privately owned Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) and state-owned Vietnamese Rubber Group (VRG) acquired more than 200,000 hectares of land through a series of deals with the Lao and Cambodian governments that lacked transparency.

This deal was backed by the World Bank’s International Finance Corp (IFC) and Germany’s Deutsche Bank, resulting in widespread devastation to the environment and livelihoods of locals. The report noted these investments stand in stark contrast to both institutions’ public commitments on ethics and sustainability, as well as the World Bank’s core mandate to end global poverty.

“We’ve known for some time that corrupt politicians in Cambodia and Laos are orchestrating the land grabbing crisis that is doing so much damage in the region,” said Megan MacInnes, Head of the Land Team at Global Witness. “This report completes the picture by exposing the pivotal role of Vietnam’s rubber barons and their financiers, Deutsche Bank and the IFC.”.

“Both companies are having severe impacts on the human rights of ordinary Lao and Cambodian citizens,” she added. “Often, the first time people learn of a plantation is when the company bulldozers arrive to clear their farms.”

HAGL was established in 1990 by Doan Nguyen Duc as a small furniture-producing factory at Pleiku in Vietnam’s Central Highlands during a logging boom. It soon diversified into timber and granite processing, real estate and tourism.

Nguyen Duc set up his own football club – HAGL FC – partnering with Arsenal FC from the Premier League. The company is Vietnam’s second largest property developer.

According to the report, Vietnam’s domestic rubber plantations covered 834,000 hectares in 2012, making it the third largest global producer of natural rubber, exporting to 50 countries, with China providing the biggest market for unprocessed rubber while the majority of processed rubber is shipped to the United States and Japan.

As a result, the economic reach and influence of HAGL and VRG had grown significantly, alongside the complaints.

“Local people’s testimony, detailed in Rubber Barons, describes the impact of these activities on their communities – increased food and water shortages, loss of livelihood without compensation and poor employment conditions are commonplace, while indigenous minorities have lost burial grounds and sacred forests to the bulldozers,” reads a Global Witness report on the release of the report and film.

It adds, “Those who protest face violence, intimidation and even arrest, often by state authorities who are meant to protect them but instead protect the Vietnamese companies.”

“These cases are shocking, but they are far from unique,” said MacInnes. “Until governments bring in and enforce regulations to end the culture of secrecy and impunity that is driving the global land grabbing crisis, international banks and financial institutions will continue to turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses and deforestation they are bankrolling.”

According to Global Witness, HAGL and VRG‘s operations are characterized by a lack of consultation with communities, non-payment of compensation and use of armed security forces to guard plantations. Further, the group claims that large areas of supposedly protected intact forest have been cleared, in violation of forest protection laws, apparently in collusion with Cambodia’s corrupt elite. Global Witness has called for HAGL and VRG to be prosecuted and for the cancelation of their plantation concessions.

The 49-page report and accompanying video are available through the Global Witness website. Global Witness has carved itself a reputation for tackling corruption at the highest levels. It recently produced another report on corruption, exposing alleged illegal activities by the leaders of Sarawak in East Malaysia. The report has been well received by authorities investigating money laundering.

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has long been criticized as a toothless tiger for its inability to deal with controversial and often bloody issues. The Sabah Insurgency launched in March by Philippine-based mercenaries, the Cambodian-Thai dispute over territorial rights at Preah Vihear and overlapping sovereign claims in the South China Seas are among the nastiest and most recent examples.

However, ethnic violence launched against Burma’s Rohingya population has repeatedly underscored the absence of a collective moral backbone among ASEAN’s 10 members and unraveled Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s lauded role in promoting democracy and human rights.

Long-time observers and non-governmental organizations have been loud in their condemnations and warnings about the potential for conflict between Muslim Rohingyas and militant Buddhists to spiral out of control, while Western governments continue to welcome Burmese efforts to “normalize”.

New York-based Human Rights Watch says the Burmese government is ethnic cleansing.

Those predictions of violence are now proving true. In Indonesia anti-terror police shot dead seven men and arrested 13 suspected of involvement in a plot to bomb the Burmese embassy in Jakarta. Two raids were carried out in the operation. The unit raided their hideout in a house on the outskirts of West Java’s capital city of Bandung, but suspects refused to surrender. The ensuing firefight lasted seven hours.

Five assembled pipe bombs were found in a backpack and the authorities said the attack was planned for last Friday.

The deadly confrontation came at the end of a difficult month for Indonesian authorities, who are dealing with a growing influx of Rohingyas fleeing violence in Burma. Their status as refugees can hardly be challenged given the well-documented threats they have lived under, which clearly violate UN laws.

At the same time, much of the world is beating an economic path to Southeast Asia in search of closer regional ties and free trade agreements. In so doing, Western countries would rather separate their business agendas from their moral obligations by leaving the distasteful business in Burma’s north to ASEAN.

While the escalating violence has displaced thousands, last month the European Union congratulated Burma on a “remarkable process of reform” as it lifted all of its sanctions except an arms embargo. The U.S. followed suit by sending Acting U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis to the country to formulate a trade framework.

In Indonesia, home of the world’s largest Muslim population, anger is rising over the Burmese government’s handling of the issue.

If ASEAN governments cannot defuse the tense situation, Rohingyas will be pushed towards the harder edges of the region and into the waiting arms of Islamic militants who still hold court in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Thailand and the southern Philippines. At that point it could become a regional issue with the potential to undermine ASEAN’s ambitious money–making agenda.

The word “tsunami” became politically controversial in the aftermath of Malaysia’s 13th General Election on May 5, which saw the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) receiving a fresh mandate to lead the country, albeit with reduced votes and fewer parliamentary seats. BN has ruled Malaysia since the 1950s, making it one of the longest-running elected party coalitions in the world. 

The word “tsunami” is being used to refer to the wave-like surge in votes coming from the urban areas of Peninsular Malaysia in favor of the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition, which almost toppled the BN majority. In fact, PR won 51 percent of the popular votes but due to distortion in the distribution of parliamentary constituencies, it only got 89 seats, to the BN’s 133. 

Prime Minister Najib Razak sparked the controversy when he attributed the loss of several BN candidates to last-minute support given by Chinese voters to opposition candidates. He called it the “Chinese tsunami”. Election analysts have debunked this assertion. 

While it is true that many Chinese are dismayed by some BN-led government policies, in particular the affirmative programs that gave preferential treatment to Malay citizens, their numbers are actually not significant enough to affect voting results. What really hit Najib’s administration was an urban tsunami, in which a swelling of votes for the opposition came from the nation’s multi-ethnic urban areas. 

These votes reflect the declining popularity of Najib’s administration among urban professionals and young voters. Significantly, these voters comprise the demographic in Peninsular Malaysia who are very vocal, both offline and especially online, about public issues like corruption, good governance, human rights, election fraud and media freedom. 

Making matters worse, Najib made the “Chinese Tsunami” remark while also calling for national unity and reconciliation. How can he now appear to be sincere? Beyond damaging his own support base, the comment could inflame race-based political sentiments, creating yet more divisions in multiracial Malaysia. 

But Najib is plagued by a bigger problem. The opposition has refused to accept the voting results. On May 8, PR organized a protest near Kuala Lumpur that was attended by more than 60,000 people. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim vowed to hold more rallies in other parts of the country to prove that the popular sentiment in Malaysia is that of disgust with the fraud and other voting irregularities allegedly committed by BN and its supporters. 

“I want to show Najib this is not a Chinese battle, this is not a Malay battle,” Anwar said before the crowd of 60,000. “We will go to every corner of this country to show we have the support of Malaysians.”

If this were an ordinary election, it would be easy to dismiss PR as an arrogant party refusing to concede defeat. But election watchdogs, scholars, and many in Malaysia share the suspicion that the recent election may have been less than fair and clean. Even the United States government has advised Malaysia to probe the alleged irregularities. 

If BN truly intends to remedy the matter, it must immediately undertake electoral reforms. Otherwise, public discontent might unleash a backlash that the BN-led government cannot handle. Last year BN survived the Bersih (Clean) election reform rallies, Malaysia’s answer to the Arab Spring movement. But can it withstand the “Malaysian tsunami”?