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| Firefighters extinguish a fire during a riot between Buddhist and Muslims in Lashio township May 29, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun |
May 29, 2013
Jared Ferrie
Lashio, Myanmar - Buddhist mobs armed with sticks and machetes burned
Muslim homes on Wednesday for a second day in the northern Myanmar city
of Lashio, contradicting claims in state media that soldiers and police
had restored calm.
A Reuters reporter saw scores of young men and boys on motorbikes and on
foot marauding through the city of 130,000 people in a mountainous
region about 700 km (430 miles) from the commercial capital Yangon.
One person was killed and four were wounded in fighting that began at
about 2 p.m., Ye Htut, spokesman for President Thein Sein, said in a
Facebook post. Police fired their guns to disperse the crowd, he said.
By early evening, Muslims shops and homes were still burning in one
quarter, underlining the difficulty the president faces in containing
mounting religious violence in an era of historic reforms since military
rule ended in March 2011.
"I don't know where the Muslims are. They all ran away," said Kyaw Soe
Win, a Buddhist resident of a mixed neighbourhood where motorbikes and
household possessions lay burning in the streets. Nearby, a man with a
sword and a stick combed through the remains of one burned-out shop.
State television said a mosque, a Muslim religious school and a number
of shops were gutted by fires started on Tuesday by Buddhists who
rampaged after hearing reports of a Muslim man setting a Buddhist woman
on fire and badly wounding her. State media said calm had returned by
Wednesday.
Myanmar has struggled with religious unrest since June last year when
fighting between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya erupted in
western Rakhine State.
That was followed by organised Rakhine attacks on Rohingya communities
in October that New York-based Human Rights Watch said amounted to
ethnic cleansing. The government calls the stateless Rohingya illegal
"Bengali" immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
"KILL ALL BENGALIS"
British tourist Stephen Barker, 46, told Reuters he saw a group of about
100 machete and stick-carrying youths rallying around his hotel in the
early afternoon, including four or five monks. Police and military moved
them on and arrested half a dozen people.
"I got a light for my cigarette from one and he told me to kill all Bengalis while waving this 18-inch blade around."
Muslims appeared to have fled a mixed Lashio neighbourhood known as Quarter Number 17.
Tuesday's unrest in Lashio was sparked by a quarrel between two people,
named by state media as Aye Aye Win, 24, a Buddhist woman who sold
petrol, and Ne Win, a Muslim man aged 48.
MRTV television said Ne Win poured petrol over Aye Aye Win and set her on fire. She was in hospital, it said.
After police detained Ne Win, Buddhists surrounded the police station
and demanded he be handed over. When they refused, the crowd went on the
rampage, attacking Myoma Mosque near Lashio market, residents said.
The authorities attempted to restore order late on Tuesday by banning
unlawful assembly under a state of emergency in the city, which is about
190 km (120 miles) from the Chinese border.
In March, at least 44 people, most of them Muslims, died in the central
city of Meikhtila after a rampage by Buddhist mobs incensed by the
killing of a monk by Muslims, shortly after a violent row between a
Buddhist couple and Muslim shop owners.
Muslims make up about 5 percent of Myanmar's 60 million people.
(Additional reporting by Aung Hla Tun in Yangon; Writing by Andrew
R.C. Marshall; Editing by Jason Szep, Robert Birsel and Ron Popeski)
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