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| Myanmar Muslims living in Malaysia show banners and placards during a demonstration against the killings of Muslims in Meikhtila, in Kuala Lumpur March 25, 2013. Hundreds of troops kept an uneasy calm in central Myanmar on Saturday after martial law was imposed to quell three days of bloody unrest between Buddhists and Muslims that is testing the country's nascent democracy. (Photo: REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad) |
Aye Win Myint
Reuters
March 25, 2013
MEIKHTILA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar's government is struggling to
contain anti-Muslim violence that touched the outskirts of the capital,
Naypyitaw, at the weekend and forced it to send troops to patrol the
streets in the town where the recent trouble started.
Four houses and a small mosque in Tatkon township on the northern edges
of Naypyitaw were set ablaze late on Sunday, a civil servant in the
capital told Reuters on Monday.
Communal tension, stifled under half a century of army rule, has
resurfaced since President Thein Sein's reformist government took office
in 2011.
It has released dissidents and relaxed media censorship, but was also
criticised for failing to quell last year's violence in Rakhine State in
western Myanmar. Official figures say 110 people were killed and
120,000 were left homeless, most of them Rohingya Muslims.
The latest unrest began last Wednesday in Meikhtila, 130 km (80 miles)
north of the capital and sparked by an argument between a Buddhist
couple and the Muslim owners of a gold shop that escalated into rioting
in which 32 people died, official figures show.
Police were criticised in the media and by local people for making
little effort to halt the violence as ethnic Burmese Buddhists including
monks stalked the streets armed with swords and knives.
More than 2,000 people are now living in makeshift camps, but calm has
been restored by the military, sent in on Friday when the government
declared martial law in the area.
"I think I am safe now and I can reopen my shop because of soldiers
guarding the town," 52-year-old Khin Mya told Reuters. "Soon after
soldiers arrived, we got peace. The situation had been very, very
dangerous in previous days."
Vijay Nambiar, U.N. special adviser on Myanmar, told Reuters after
visiting the area on Sunday that the government had said to him it would
not hesitate to send troops in elsewhere if needed.
In a statement, the United Nations warned the sectarian unrest could endanger the reforms initiated by Thein Sein.
"Religious leaders and other community leaders must also publicly call
on their followers to abjure violence, respect the law and promote
peace," Nambiar said in the statement.
State-run MRTV said on Sunday police had arrested 35 people in Meikhtila
and two other townships in connection with the violence.
In one incident late on Saturday, unknown assailants torched more than
40 homes, 38 belonging to Muslims, in Ywadan village in Yamaethin
township, said Soe Lwin, a local official. The village is 66 km (41
miles) south of Meikhtila.
"At about 8 p.m., around 100 people turned up shouting 'Let's burn it
down, let's burn it down,' and started destroying our house first," said
a 35-year-old shop owner in Ywadan, asking not to be named.
"It didn't look like they were outsiders. I think it's the people from
this area," he said, speaking through the fence of a school where
Muslims had taken refuge. "I could feel the way they looked at us had
changed since Meikhtila happened."
Tension was high in certain parts of Yangon, the former capital and
Myanmar's biggest city. Police were stationed outside mosques on Sunday
evening.
Myanmar is a predominately Buddhist country, but about 5 percent of its 60 million people are Muslims.
(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun in Yangon, Soe Zeya Tun in Ywadan and Andrew
R.C. Marshall in Bangkok; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Alan
Raybould)
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