Latest Highlight

RB Channel

Alex Caring-Lobel
Tricycle
March 22, 2013


Just hours ago, Burmese President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in central Burma due to killing, destruction of property, and general rioting in the streets of the town of Meikhtila. Violence erupted following a dispute between a Muslim gold shop owner and Buddhist customers. After four nearby gold shops were burnt to the ground, a 1,000-strong mob of Buddhists ran riot through the Muslim neighborhood. The death toll is currently being reported at at least 20, but this number will likely rise. TIME reports:


Journalists attempting to report in the area have been threatened. A photographer for the Associated Press reportedly had a foot-long dagger placed against his neck by a monk who had his face covered. The confrontation was defused when the photographer handed over his camera’s memory card. Late on Friday, the Burmese government said that nine reporters trapped amid the unrest had been rescued by local police and evacuated from the area. 

On social media, residents reported seeing bodies scattered by the side of the road and women and children lying helpless, their homes destroyed. U Aung, a Muslim lawyer living in Meikhtila, told TIME that the violence was already spreading to nearby townships. “They are burning mosques and houses and stealing Muslim property,” said Aung.Tricycle readers will be familiar with the Buddhist-led violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in western Burma from the article "Buddhist Nationalism in Burma" in the current issue. In the article, Burmese dissident and democracy activist Maung Zarni makes a convincing argument for the characterization of recent anti-Rohingya violence as genocide. Zarni highlights the harnessing of the same sangha-led forces that occasioned the "Saffron Revolution" (2007) to accomplish these ends.

Recent unrest in Meikhtila suggests two important things. First, anti-Muslim violence and rioting has spread beyond the western Burmese Rakhine state and into the heart of Burma. Second, since the violence appears to be directed at Muslims of Indian origin—not Rohingya Muslims—this would seem to corroborate Zarni's assertion of the anti-Muslim, religious sentiment of these riots, repeatedly dismissed as "sectarian violence" by many mainstream media outlets at the time of the outbreak of violence last year. (TIME quotes Chris Lew, founder of The Arakan Project: "the perception of last year's unrest as sectarian rather than religious was inaccurate.") Zarni makes this contention in his article for Tricycle and reiterated the point when I interviewed him over Skype from Indonesia the day before the last. We also spoke about his objection to the term "communal violence," which TIME has used in the article quoted above, and the reasons why the conflict hasn't been called a genocide. The anti-Muslim racism we're currently witnessing can be tracked back to Burma's colonial past, which Zarni adumbrates in the article and further elaborates in our interview. Zarni's article for Tricycle can be found here and our interview will run on the Tricycle blog on Wednesday.

In other news, Ariana Huffington, chair, president, and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, has authored an article on corporate mindfulness on her site. Titled "Mindfulness, Meditation, Wellness and Their Connection to Corporate America's Bottom Line," the article peddles the benefits of corporate values and its platitudes regarding "performance and productivity": "I do want to talk about maximizing profits and beating expectations—by emphasizing the notion that what's good for us as individuals is also good for corporate America's bottom line." Most of the piece focuses on cutting healthcare costs to corporations by promoting mindfulness meditation.

Ironically, the research touted here was conducted through a partnership between healthcare behemoth Aetna and Duke University, in which yoga and other mind-body therapies were made available to all Aetna employees nationwide. Apparently, Aetna is not only too cheap to pay their patrons' medical costs, they're also too cheap to pay those of their own employees.

The one company that Ariana Huffington reports "gets it," is Google, whose in-house mindfulness consultant Chade-Meng Tan ensures the happiness of its employees through the stresses and invasiveness of 80-hour workweeks. In such a context, mindfulness reveals itself as the most recent incarnation of industrial psychology, a field of knowledge that has proven effective in pacifying workers and improving their "performance and productivity," regardless of any inhumane workplace conditions and expectations, or the deleterious effects of their work on the world-at-large (such mindfulness practice has most famously been taught to Monsanto workers).

Huffington ends the article, out of the blue, by quoting Institute for Mindful Leadership founder Janice Marturano: "We have one life. What's most important is that you be awake for it." More honest and in keeping with the rest of the article might be, "We have one life. What's most important is the bottom line." 

Images: 

Ariana Huffington
The 91 Rohingya refugees were stranded on Koh Lone, an island off the south of Phuket, after their boat engine seized. Photo: Phuket Marine Police
Kritsada Mueanhawong
Phuket Gazette
March 23, 2013

PHUKET: The boatload of 91 Rohingya forced to land yesterday on Koh Lone, off the south end of Phuket, have been taken into custody and will face yet another deportation, this time from Thailand.

The group, who were forced to land on Koh Lone because their boat engine seized, told reporters they were taken into custody by Indian authorities on about January 26 and escorted out of Indian territorial waters on March 19.

The group, which includes three women and seven boys, are now being held at Chalong Police Station where officers are recording their arrival, officially placing them under arrest.

Phuket Marine Police along with Rawai Mayor Arun Soros and other village officials recovered the refugees from the island this morning.

“The men, women and children were tired and hungry,” Lt Jeerayuth Onthong of the Marine Police told the Phuket Gazette.

“We gave them some food and water, then let them shower and pray before we brought them to Chalong Police Station,” he said.

Talking through a translator, the refugees explained strife-torn Rakhine State in Myanmar (story here) on January 22.

“Their destination is Malaysia,” Lt Jeerayuth said.

“On January 26, they went the wrong way and entered Indian territorial waters. They were arrested by Indian Police, then ‘pushed out’ of the country on March 19. They headed off to the same destination, Malaysia,” he added.

“They are now being placed under arrest. After they have been processed they will be handed over to Phuket Immigration, who will begin the process to have them deported,” Lt Jeerayuth said.

Meanwhile, Wichit Police arrested 11 other Rohingya at a mosque on Cape Panwa at about 8am today.

“We believe they are from the same boat. They are now at Phuket Immigration,” explained Lt Jeerayuth.

Capt Angkarn Yasanop at Phuket Immigration told the Gazette, “We received 11 Rohingya from Wichit Police at about 3pm. There are nine men, one woman and a 10-year-old boy in the group.

“We are waiting for the other group to be recorded at Chalong Police Station. Once that is done, they will be transferred here,” he explained.

“Meanwhile, the boy will be sent to a refuge shelter on Koh Sireh [on the east side of Phuket Town],” he added.

Al Jazeera 
March 23, 2013

South2North discusses human rights in Zimbabwe and the unfolding human tragedy in Myanmar.

Imagine being declared stateless and not able to return to your country of birth because of your tribe, ethnicity, skin colour or religion.

Myanmar is Asia’s newest democracy after elections last year, which saw the end of a military dictatorship and the return to world favour. But the United Nations says the long-running conflict between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority population is a humanitarian tragedy in the making.

Ethnic Rohingyas are being denied citizenship in their own country and herded into camps where they face a triple threat from violence, starvation and disease. The UN estimates about 13,000 Rohingya fled western Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2012, and an estimated 500 refugees have already died at sea with more deaths expected. 

South2North talks to Maung Tun Khin, a human rights activist from Myanmar: 

"The military government is killing the Rohingyas silently. They are blocking aid. And many Rohingyas cannot go to the hospital. More than 230 Rohingya women are facing serious difficulty in delivering their babies."

Kennedy Gihanna, a Rwandan refugee and now successful human rights lawyer in South Africa, explains that the situation in Myanmar concerns him, knowing the patterns that lead to genocide. 

Fourteen years ago Gihana wrapped his school graduation certificate in a piece of plastic and tied it around his body with a piece of banana rope. Then he walked 3,000 kilometers from Kigali to Johannesburg bypassing roadblocks, soldiers and gangsters. It took him six months.

"I have been watching the issue of Myanmar. I see it on TV; it’s very sad. Nobody wants to listen to these people. Nobody even wants to protect them. Everybody, the UN, the Europena Union, the Asian Pacific, nobody wants to find a solution. And you make these people stateless in their own country. They are unwanted people," Gihanna says.

On Sunday, March 17, in Zimbabwe, three senior officials of the Movement for Democratic Change, together with internationally renowned human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, were arrested by plain-clothes officers at the home of a top adviser to opposition leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. These arrests have followed months of harsh crackdowns. 

Just a few days before she was arrested, Mtetwa was a guest on this week’s South2North. She came on to explain her own work in defending human rights and how she had previously been harassed by the police for her work. 

She said: "Well, I mean if the ground is uneven and you do defend people you know I’m not in the good books with those who are enjoying political power. You do expect to become part of the problem for them. You ought not to defend them and if you are defending them you are saying that what they are doing is correct."

The violence is the worst sectarian bloodshed to hit the Southeast Asian nation this year (Photo: AFP)
Al Jazeera
March 23, 2013

Army regains control of central city of Meikhtila where clashes between Muslims and Buddhists have left dozens dead.

Myanmar's army has regained control of a central city where several days of clashes between Buddhists and Muslims left dozens of people dead and scores of buildings in flames. 

Truckloads of soldiers could be seen on Saturday patrolling Meikhtila and taking up positions at intersections and banks. 

"Calm has been restored after troops have taken charge of security," said Win Htein, an opposition legislator from Meikhtila. 

"So far, nearly 6,000 Muslim people have been relocated at a stadium and a police station for their safety." 

Some residents, who had cowered in their homes for days since the mayhem began on Wednesday, started venturing out on the streets to take in the destruction. 

The violence is the worst sectarian bloodshed to hit the Southeast Asian nation this year. 

Thein Sein, Myanmar's president, imposed a state of emergency in the region on Friday in a bid to stop the unrest from spreading.

The violence, the first of its kind reported in Myanmar since a wave of bloodshed shook western Rakhine state twice last year, underscored the government's failure to rein in anti-Muslim sentiment in the predominantly Buddhist country. 

It was not immediately clear which side bore the brunt of the latest unrest, but terrified Muslims, who make about 30 percent of Meikhtila's 100,000 inhabitants, stayed off the streets on Friday.

Machetes seized

Many had their shops and homes burned and some angry Buddhist residents and monks tried to stop firefighters from dousing the blazes. 

Riot police crisscrossed town seizing machetes and hammers from enraged Buddhist mobs. 

At least five mosques were torched and thousands of terrified Muslims have fled their homes, escorted to safety by police to two make-shift camps. Some Buddhists, meanwhile, have sought shelter at local monasteries. 

Little appeared to be left of some palm tree-lined neighborhoods, where whole plots were reduced to smouldering masses of twisted debris and ash. 

Broken glass, destroyed motorcycles and overturned tables littered roads beside rows of burnt-out homes and shops, evidence of the widespread chaos of the last two days. 

Residents described gruesome scenes. Local businessman San Hlaing said he counted 28 bodies this week and had seen blackened corpses burning in piles. 

The government's struggle to contain the violence is proving another major challenge to Sein's reformist administration as it attempts to chart a path to democracy after nearly half a century of military rule that once crushed all dissent. 

Thein Sein took office two years ago this month, and despite ushering in an era of reform, he has faced violence in Rakhine state and an upsurge in fighting with ethnic Kachin rebels in the north.

The government has also had to deal with major protests at a northern copper mine where angry residents - emboldened by promises of freedom of expression - have come out to denounce land grabbing. 

Institutionalized racism against the Rohingya Muslims led Burma to genocide By Maung Zarni 

For those outside Burma, the broadcast images of the Theravada monks of the “Saffron Revolution” of 2007 are still fresh. Backed by the devout Buddhist population, these monks were seen chanting metta and the Lovingkindness Sutta on the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay, and Pakhoke-ku, calling for an improvement in public well-being in the face of the growing economic hardships afflicting Burma’s Buddhists. The barefooted monks’ brave protests against the rule of the country’s junta represented a fine example of engaged Buddhism, a version of Buddhist activism that resonates with the age-old Orientalist, decontextualized view of what Buddhists are like: lovable, smiley, hospitable people who lead their lives mindfully and have much to offer the non-Buddhist world in the ways of fostering peace. 

But in the past year, the world has been confronted with images of the same robed monks publicly demonstrating against Islamic nations’ distribution of aid to starving Muslim Rohingya, displaced into refugee camps in their own country following Rakhine Buddhist attacks. The rise of genocidal Buddhist racism against the Rohingya, a minority community of nearly one million people in the western Burmese province of Rakhine (also known as Arakan), is an international humanitarian crisis. The military-ruled state has been relentless in its attempts to erase Rohingya ethnic identity, which was officially recognized as a distinct ethnic group in 1954 by the democratic government of Prime Minister U Nu. Indeed, in the past months of violent conflict, beginning in June 2012, the Rohingya have suffered over 90 percent of the total death toll and property destruction, including the devastation of entire villages and city neighborhoods. Following the initial eruption of violence in western Burma, several waves of killing, arson, and rampage have been directed at the Rohingya, backed by Burma’s security forces. 

Over the course of the past few years an extremely potent and dangerous strain of racism has emerged among Burma’s Theravada Buddhists, who have participated in the destruction and expulsion of the entire population of Rohingya Muslims. The atrocities occurring in the name of Buddhist nationalism in Burma are impossible to reconcile with the ideal of metta. Buddhist Rakhine throw young Rohingya children into the flames of their own homes before the eyes of family members. On June 3, 10 out-of-province Muslim pilgrims were pulled off a bus in the Rakhine town of Taunggoke, about 200 miles west of the former capital, Rangoon, and beaten to death by a mob of more than 100 Buddhist men. The crime occurred in broad daylight and in full view of both the public and local law enforcement officials. 

One of the most shocking aspects of anti-Rohingya racism is that the overwhelming majority of Burmese, especially in the heartland of upper Burma, have never met a single Rohingya in person, as most Rohingya live in the Rakhine State of western Burma adjacent to Bangladesh. 


Physical appearance—aside from language, religion, culture, and class—is an integral marker in a community of nationalists. The importance of complexion is often overlooked when examining racism across Asia. Rohingya are categorically darker-skinned people—sometimes called by the slur “Bengali kalar.” Indeed, the lighter-skinned Buddhists of Burma are not alone in their fear of dark-skinned people and belief that the paler the skin, the more desirable, respectable, and protected one is. 

The virulent hatred and oppression directed at Muslims extends to any Buddhists who are considered to have helped them. In October 2012, local Rakhine Buddhist men were named, degraded, punished, and paraded around public places wearing handwritten signs that said, “I am a traitor.” Their crimes? Selling groceries to a Rohingya. 

The rose-tinted Orientalist take on Buddhism is so hegemonic that Westerners are often shocked when they hear of the atrocities carried out by militarized Buddhist masses and the political states that have adopted or manipulated Buddhism as part of the state ideological apparatus. Buddhism’s popular image as a peaceful, humanistic religious doctrine immune to dogma contradicts a long history of violent Buddhist empires—from Emperor Ashoka’s on the old Indian subcontinent to the Buddhist monarchies of precolonial Sri Lanka and Siam, and the Khmer and Burmese kingdoms—some of whom sanctioned war with recourse to the dharma. The oppression carried out under Burmese President Thein Sein and his Sri Lankan counterpart, President Rajapaksa, is just the latest from a long line of violent Buddhist regimes. 

Prejudice arises wherever communities of different faiths, classes, and ethnicities coexist and interact. But genocide is not an inevitable outcome of group prejudice; there have to be institutional mechanisms and an organized harnessing of forces, generally enacted by the state. Burma’s lay public and political society, while supposedly informed by the worldwide ideals of human rights and democracy that spread across formerly closed leftist polities, have evidently failed to undergo what Aung San Suu Kyi famously called “the revolution of the spirit.” Instead, they have chosen to pursue a destructive nationalism that is rooted in the fear of losing property, land, and racial and religious purity. 

The Burmese state has mobilized its society’s Islamaphobia through various institutional mechanisms, including the state media outlets and social media sites, the presidential office’s Facebook page among them. Burmese-language social media sites, which thrive out of the purview of international media watchdogs, are littered with hate speech. Postings of graphic images of Muslim victims, including Rohingyas, on Facebook—easily the most popular social media website in the newly opened Burma—have been greeted with approving responses from the country’s Buddhist netizens, both within the country and throughout the diaspora. The few Burmese and foreign human rights activists and journalists who dare to speak out against this rising tide of racist, fascist tendencies in Buddhist society have been increasingly subjected to slander, cyber-threats, and hate speech. Journalists have repeatedly expressed dismay over the volume of angry hate email they receive from Burmese citizens whenever stories are published condemning the recent violence. 

In a documentary first aired by Al Jazeera on December 9, 2012, Professor William Schabas, one of the world’s foremost experts on genocide and until recently the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, characterized the sectarian violence against the Rohingya as genocide. “We’re moving into a zone where the word can be used,” Schabas said “When you see measures preventing births, trying to deny the identity of the people, hoping to see that. . . they no longer exist, denying their history, denying the legitimacy of the right to live where they live, these are all warning signs that mean that it’s not frivolous to envisage the use of the term genocide.”


The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which entered into force on January 12, 1951, states: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 

( a ) Killing members of the group; 
( b ) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 
( c ) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 
( d ) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 
( e ) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

The ruling Burmese, both the Buddhist society and the Buddhist state, have committed the first four of these acts, though the state denies wrongdoing by their security forces during the nearly six months of violence in 2012 that left 167 Rohingya Muslims dead and 110,000 refugees. 

As for paragraph (e), malnourished, poorly educated Rohingya children have not been “forcibly transferred” to another group, but there have been instances of Rohingya children being brutally murdered—stabbed, drowned, burned alive—by the Buddhist Rakhine. 

During a public lecture in Brunei, Southeast Asia, on December 2, 2012, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), was asked by a student what the OIC—with its 57 member states representing, in theory, at least 1.5 billion Muslims—was doing to address the persecution of Muslim minorities around the world. In his response, Ihsanoglu described the Burmese democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as a human rights activist for Burma’s Buddhists. Suu Kyi, he said, is “only interested in the human rights of the Buddhists because they are human beings and the Muslims are not.” While the emotion behind the statement is understandable, there is a political calculus at play. Aung San Suu Kyi has little to gain from speaking out against the treatment of the Rohingya Muslims. She is no longer a political dissident, she’s a politician, and her eyes are fixed on a prize: winning the 2015 election with a majority Buddhist vote. 

Prior to his lecture in Brunei, Professor Ihsanoglu sent a letter to Suu Kyi on behalf of the OIC in which he pressed the National League for Democracy (NLD) leader to use her enormous awza, or earned societal influence, to help stem the tide of Buddhist racism against the Rohingya and the Muslim population at large. The letter was met with silence. In failing to decry the human rights abuses against the Rohingya, Burma’s iconic leader—who is seen in some Burmese Buddhist circles as bhodhi saddhava (“would-be Buddha”)—has failed to walk the walk of Buddhist humanism. 

On January 4, 2013, the 65th anniversary of Burma’s independence from British rule, Suu Kyi said in a speech at the NLD headquarters that Burma’s people need to rely on themselves if they want to realize their dream of a free and prosperous nation. “Don’t expect anyone to be your savior,” she warned. But as the Burmese magazine The Irrawaddy pointed out in a recent editorial, “Suu Kyi is right that Burma doesn’t need a savior; but it does need a leader.”


The current leaders of Burma’s 25-year-old human rights movement now speak the language of national security, absolutist sovereignty, and conditional human rights, echoing the language and sentiment of their former captors, the ruling military. The NLD and the democracy opposition have failed to see their own personal and ideological contradictions. Their embrace of conditional human rights and their absolutist reading of sovereignty indicates that they have talked the talk of Buddhism, with its ideal of universal lovingkindness, but have failed to walk the walk. Many student leaders and human rights activists of the 1988 uprisings who spent half their lives behind bars in the notorious military-run Insein Prison as “prisoners of conscience” are unprepared to extend such human rights ideals to the Rohingya Muslims, a population that the United Nations identifies as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. 

Buddhism, as a religious and philosophical system, has absolutely nothing to say about the political, economic, and cultural organizations that we call nation states. Buddhism is not about people imagining a national community predicated upon adversarial relations but rather about using one’s own intellectual faculties to see through the nonexistent core-essence of self. Yet in Burma, this humanistic philosophy has proven itself indisposed to guard against overarching societal prejudices and their ultranationalist proponents, those Burmese who vociferously profess their adherence to Buddhist faith, practice religious rituals and patronize Buddhist institutions, and then proceed to commit unspeakable atrocities against anyone they imagine to be an enemy of Buddhism, the Buddhist state, Buddhist wealth, Buddhist women, and Buddhist land. Instead of propagating the guiding societal principles of religious tolerance, nondiscrimination, and social inclusion among lay devotees, the influential Buddhist clergy themselves have, in their outspoken criticism and picketing against the Royingya, become an entire people’s most dangerous threat. 

Throughout the alien British rule from 1824 to 1948, the Buddhism of colonial Burma contributed to the formation of a common national identity, providing a basis for concerted anti-imperialist efforts among disparate social classes and ethnolinguistically diverse Buddhist communities with conflicting political interests. The current resurgence of racism is a direct result of a half century of despotic military rule. The careful construction of an iron cage—a monolithic constellation of values, an ad hoc ethos—locks in and naturalizes a singular view of what constitutes Burma’s national culture. The dominant population remains potently ethnonationalist, essentializing Buddhism as the core of an authentic Burmese national identity. 

For a minority of Burmese Buddhists, the combination of Buddhist nationalism and strong racial distinctions that served as an ideological springboard and a rallying cry against the British Raj is now scorned as a thing of the past. But for many Burmese Buddhists, the same ethnoreligious nationalism that once served the Burmese independence movement has provided an environment in which their racism can flourish. 

Buddhist-inspired social forces have proven to be a double-edged sword over the years. In the newly independent post–WWII Burma of the late 1940s, Marxist-inspired revolutionary nationalists led by the martyred Aung San (Aung San Suu Kyi’s father) set out to forge a new multiculturalist, secular, and civic nationalism. In 1948, after Aung San was assassinated by a rival Burmese politician (and less than 90 days after the country’s newly acquired independence), Burma plunged into a long series of armed revolts against the central state. Aung San’s successors gradually abandoned any attempts to secularize Burmese nationalism along the lines of civic nationalism, which would have moved the Burmese away from the premodern provincialist blood- and faith-based view of national identity. 

Against this backdrop, the popular racism of the Buddhist majority presents itself as a potent social force that can be appropriated by Burma’s national security state to unify and rally anti-Muslim Burmese citizens. Burma’s state authorities, consisting predominantly of generals and ex-generals, are also generous patrons of Buddhist institutional activities such as dana and pagoda and temple building. These military leaders will continue to feed the masses their opiate—the pretension of Buddhism, with its effect of normalizing human suffering—to the masses, as long as the Buddhists believe that their faith, and not their political economy, promises better rebirth. As one regime official told me, “The bottom line is, we don’t want any more ‘Mus’ in our country, but we can’t possibly kill them all.” As a solution, the reformist state leadership has outsourced the job of cleansing its Golden Land to the Rakhine Buddhists. 

Maung Zarni is a Burmese activist and scholar. He is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and the founder of the Free Burma Coalition. 

Image 1: Jonathan Saruk/Getty images. Thousands of unregistered Rohingya Muslim refugees from Burma live next to the registered refugee camp at Kutupalong Refugee Camp, Bangladesh. 

Image 2: Thet Htoo/Zuma Press/Newscom. Rakhine men and a Buddhist monk hold handmade spears and watch as a fire burns in Sittwe, capital city of Rakhine State. Two weeks of clashes between Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists left an official death toll at 50, with 58 injured and more than 2,500 houses burned down. 

Image 3: Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty/Newscom. Rakhine Buddhist monks pray in Langon, Burma, in June 2012. Several thousand monks took to the streets of Mandalay to protest against a world Islamic body’s efforts to help Muslim Rohingya in strife-hit Rakhine State. 

Image 4: Jonathan Saruk/Getty images. An unregistered Rohingya child draws on the wall of a classroom provided by the charity Islamic Relief at Leda Refugee Camp, Bangladesh. 

 Published on Tricycle.
Many ethnic Rohingya Muslims have been killed or forced to flee homes due to attacks by Buddhists over the year (Photo: AFP)

Al Jazeera
March 23, 2013

Officials report at least 42 refugees killed and dozens more wounded by raging fire at crowded camp in north Thailand.

At least 42 Myanmar refugees have died in a raging fire at a camp in Thailand, officials have said. 

Naramol Palawat, governor of Mae Hong Son, said hundreds of temporary thatch huts at the Ban Mae Surin refugee camp were reduced to ashes. She said the blaze was believed to have been started by a cooking accident. 

Dozens of other people were injured in the fire with women, children and the elderly believed to make up the majority of the victims. 

"The latest death toll we can confirm through military walkie-talkies is 42," Palawat said, adding the toll was likely to rise further as rescue workers search the area. 

A local district official said hot weather, combined with strong winds caused the fire to spread quickly among the thatched bamboo shelters. 

Police on Saturday said around 400 temporary homes had been incinerated, while the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Bureau said a school, clinic and two food warehouses had also been destroyed. 

The Thai government pledged an investigation into the fire at the camp, which houses roughly 3,700 refugees. 

Ten camps strung out along the Thai-Myanmar border house a total of about 130,000 people, who first began arriving in the 1980s. 

Many of the refugees have fled conflict zones in ethnic areas of Myanmar, also known as Burma. 

The density of the housing and lack of firefighting equipment mean large numbers of shelters are often destroyed, but Friday's death toll was unusually high. 

Mae Hong Son is about 925km north of Bangkok.
Muslims fleeing violence in the Myanmar town of Meikhtila arrive at a stadium that the authorities have designated a safe haven. More than 20 people have been killed in Buddhist attacks on Muslims since Wednesday. (Photo: Soe Zeya Tun)

BBC News
March 22, 2013

A state of emergency has been imposed in the Burmese town of Meiktila following three days of communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims. 

A statement announcing the decision on behalf of President Thein Sein was broadcast on state television. 

He said that the move would enable the military to help restore order in the riot-hit town, south of Mandalay. 

At least 20 people are reported to have been killed since the violence began, but exact figures are unclear. 

A BBC reporter who has just returned from the town said he saw about 20 Muslim bodies, which local men were trying to destroy by burning. 

Meiktila MP Win Thein told the BBC Burmese service that scores of mostly Buddhist people accused of being involved in the violence had been arrested by police. 

He said that he saw the bodies of eight people who had been killed in violence in the town on Friday morning. Many Muslims had fled gangs of Buddhist youths, he said, while other Muslims were in hiding. 

Mr Win said that that violence that recurred on Friday morning has now receded, although the atmosphere in Meiktila remains tense. 

Police say that at least 15 Buddhist monks on Friday burnt down a house belonging to a Muslim family on the outskirts of the town. There are no reports of any injuries.

The disturbances began on Wednesday when an argument in a gold shop escalated quickly, with mobs setting mainly Muslim buildings alight, including some mosques. 

Fighting in the streets between men from rival communities later broke out. 

Meanwhile people in the town have told the BBC of food shortages because the main market in the town has been closed for the last five days. 

Hundreds of riot police have been sent into Meiktila. They have been seen hurriedly evacuating crowds of men and women from their burning homes. 

However they have been accused of doing little to stop the razing of entire neighbourhoods and the accumulation of casualties from both communities. 

The BBC's south-east Asia correspondent Jonathan Head says that the eruption of communal anger uncomfortably echoes what happened in Rakhine state last year, where nearly 200 people were killed and tens of thousands forced from their homes. 

The conflict that erupted in Rakhine involved Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, who are not recognised as Burmese citizens. Scores of Rohingyas have fled what they say is persecution in Burma in recent months. 

The government has yet to present any long-term proposals to resolve that conflict, our correspondent says, and simmering fear and mistrust between Buddhists and the country's Muslim minorities has boiled over in the more open political climate prevailing since the first elected government in half a century took office two years ago. 

Meanwhile residents in Meiktila have complained that police have struggled to control groups of people on the streets armed with knives and sticks. 

Most of these men are Buddhists, police say, angered over the death of a Buddhist monk who suffered severe burns on Wednesday.
Smoke rises from burning houses around a mosque in riot-hit Meiktila in central Myanmar on Thursday.

Phyo Wai Lin, Jethro Mullen and Kocha Olarn
CNN
March 22, 2013

Yangon, Myanmar -- Buddhist monks armed with swords and machetes stalked the streets of a city in central Myanmar on Friday where sectarian violence has left about 20 people dead and begun to spread to other areas, according to local officials. 

Members of the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Meiktila township have clashed this week after a dispute between a Muslim gold shop owner and two Buddhist sellers Wednesday ignited simmering communal tensions. 

Rioters have set fire to houses, schools and mosques, prompting thousands of residents to flee their homes amid unrest that had echoes of sectarian troubles that killed scores of people in western Myanmar last year. 

The United Nations and the United States have expressed concern about the violence in the lakeside city about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Mandalay.

Win Htein, an opposition member of parliament for Meiktila, said the number of dead in the city has risen to about 20 by his estimate -- most of them Muslims -- after charred bodies were found in the streets. 

"I have not seen this scale of violence before in my life," he said. "I am very sad. The community used to live in peace." 

Myanmar is emerging from decades of military repression and has taken a number of significant steps toward democracy in recent years under President Thein Sein. But it has been plagued by bouts of ethnic violence that some analysts say are a byproduct of the changing political climate. 

Burning mosques 

A group of about 100 Buddhists, including some monks, went around Meiktila on Thursday night torching mosques, said Police Lt. Col. Aung Min, and while most of them have returned home, some are still wandering the streets, carrying weapons. 

Although Aung Min declined to provide an official death toll, he said the violence had spread to a nearby town, Win Twin, where a mosque was burned down overnight. 

He said about 1,000 Muslims had taken temporary shelter in a soccer stadium in Meiktila, where about 30% of the 100,000 residents are estimated to be Muslims. 

Win Htein said he believed that more than 5,000 Buddhists had fled to monasteries around the city to escape the violence. 

Many members of both communities had lost their homes, he said. 

Journalists in the city who tried to take photos of the clashes said they were threatened by Buddhists, some of them monks, who were holding sticks and knives. 

Violence in Rakhine 

In the western state of Rakhine, tensions between the majority Buddhist community and the Rohingya, a stateless ethnic Muslim group, boiled over into clashes that killed scores of people and left tens of thousands of others living in makeshift camps last year. 

Most of the victims were Rohingya. 

"The ongoing intercommunal strife in Rakhine State is of grave concern," the International Crisis Group said in a November report. "And there is the potential for similar violence elsewhere, as nationalism and ethno-nationalism rise and old prejudices resurface." 

A failure by authorities to address deepening divisions between the communities could result in a resumption of violence in the future, the report said, "which would be to the detriment of both communities, and of the country as a whole." 

Vijay Nambiar, special adviser to the U.N. secretary-general on Myanmar, on Thursday expressed "deep sorrow at the tragic loss of lives and destruction" in Meiktila this week. 

He called for "firm action" from Myanmar authorities, combined with "the continued fostering of communal harmony and preservation of peace and tranquility among the people." 

Win Htein, the local lawmaker, said that he believed there were now about 1,000 police officers in the area. 

He said he had spoken to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate and leader of the opposition National League for Democracy, who had said local authorities should use police to control the situation according to the law. 

The U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, Derek Mitchell, said Thursday that he was "deeply concerned" about the reports of violence.

Urgent Action Needed to Save Muslims in Burma from Pre-Planned Violence 

March 22, 2013

On 20th March 2013 at 10 am, a Buddhist couple from Meiktila Township entered a gold shop to try and sell some fake gold and started to threaten and abuse the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper, who tried to defend himself with a stick, suffered a head injury. 

After half an hour, a crowd gathered and started stoning the shop and destroyed it. Two hours later, a big crowd came to the town and started destroying property, Muslims’ shops, mosques and houses were burnt down. 

The death toll is 47, including 11 women, 28 madrassa students and 5 teachers. Security personnel are not protecting. One reliable source said the killing, burning and looting is still going on in Meiktila as well as other towns and villages. There are over a 1000 Muslims taking refuge in the football field with no food. Food cannot be sent to them because of “security”. 

This was a pre-planned attack on minority Muslims of Burma. During recent weeks anti-Muslim campaigns have been getting stronger in Burma. President Thein Sein’s government has incited the attacks and ignored the growing anti-Muslim campaigns. A monk, who was arrested for similar acts in 2003 and subsequently released, has been preaching the ‘cleansing of Muslims from Myanmar’ for months now. 

BROUK President Tun Khin said, “It is very clear that security forces are just watching while the mobs are destroying and burning Muslim’s houses. Cleansing of Muslims in Burma is happening under the noses of the international community. These are not communal clashes; this is not equal sides fighting. These are organized attacks to cleanse of Muslims where the vast majority of those killed and displaced are Muslims.” 

We urge the United Nations, European Union and ASEAN to put effective pressure on the Burmese regime to stop the killings and violence against Muslims in Burma, to restore peace and security in the region and to allow the international community and NGOs to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to the victims. 

As Burma is manifestly failing to protect its Muslim population, we also urge the international community to use the “responsibility to protect” or the duty to prevent mass atrocities. This responsibility now lies with the international community. 

We call for pressure on the President Thein Sein’s government to ensure that displaced people can return to their original villages safely and freely. We call on the international community to pressure the Burmese government to stop anti-Muslim activities and racism in Burma. There should be laws on racism if the government wants to see durable peace in Burma. 

For more information, please contact Tun Khin +447888714866. 
Burnt houses are seen in Meikhtila, March 21, 2013.
Photo: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun
Reuters
March 22, 2013

Unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar has reduced neighborhoods to ashes and stoked fears that last year's sectarian bloodshed is spreading into the country's heartland in a test of Asia's newest democracy. 

Buildings in Meikhtila were still burning early on Friday and agitated Buddhist crowds roamed the otherwise near-deserted streets after three days of turbulence, said Reuters reporters in the city 540 km (336 miles) north of the commercial capital Yangon.

Five people, including a Buddhist monk, have been killed and dozens wounded since Wednesday, state media reported. Other authorities put the death toll at 10 or higher.

The unleashing of ethnic hatred, suppressed during 49 years of military rule that ended in March 2011, is challenging the reformist government of one of Asia's most ethnically diverse countries.

Jailed dissidents have been released, a free election held and censorship lifted in Myanmar's historic democratic transition. But the government has faced mounting criticism over its failure to stop the bloodshed between Buddhists and Muslims.

"I am really sad over what happened here because this is not just happening to one person. It's affecting all of us," said Maung Maung, a Buddhist ward leader in Meikhtila.

Hundreds of Muslims have fled their homes to shelter at a sports stadium, said local officials. The unrest is a bloody reprise of last year's violence in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, which officially killed 110 people and left 120,000 people homeless, most of them stateless Rohingya Muslims.

BURNING MOSQUE, ARMED RESIDENTS

Locals complained there were too few police in this city of about 180,000 people to subdue the unrest. It erupted after an argument between a Buddhist couple and the Muslim owners of a gold shop spiraled into a riot involving hundreds of people, said police.

Reuters saw some Meikhtila residents arming themselves with knives and sticks in an eerie echo of the Rakhine violence in 2012, when pitched battles between the two communities later morphed into orchestrated attacks on Muslim communities by organized gangs of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

The United Nations warned the sectarian unrest could endanger a fragile reform program launched after Myanmar's quasi-civilian government replaced a decades-old military dictatorship in 2011.

"Religious leaders and other community leaders must also publicly call on their followers to abjure violence, respect the law and promote peace," Vijay Nambiar, U.N. special adviser of the secretary-general, said in a statement.

Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, but about 5 percent of its 60 million people are Muslims. There are large and long-established communities in Yangon and Mandalay, Myanmar's two largest cities, where tensions are simmering.

"Everyone is in shock here. We never expected this to happen," said a Muslim teacher in Mandalay, requesting anonymity.

Rumors that violent agitators were heading for the city had set its Muslim community on edge, he said. Buddhist monks known for their anti-Islamic views last year staged several street protests in Mandalay.

In Meikhtila, at least one mosque, an Islamic religious school, several shops and a government office were set alight, said a fire service official, who declined to be named. Reuters saw both Buddhist and Muslim homes burned.

Sectarian unrest is common in central Myanmar, although reports were stifled under the military dictatorship.

Three people died in Sinbyukyun in 2006 when Buddhists attacked homes and shops belonging to Muslims and ethnic Indians, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable.

"The incident reveals underlying tense inter-ethnic relations in the heartland," said the cable, which also referenced similar communal riots in Kyaukse, a town near Meikhtila, in 2003.

(Writing by Andrew R.C. Marshall; Editing by Jason Szep)
(Photo: Tayza Hlaing/Irrawaddy)
Amnesty International
March 22, 2013

Violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Burma that reportedly left several people dead demonstrates an urgent need for Burmese authorities to protect people at risk, Amnesty International said. 

On Wednesday, violent clashes broke out between Muslim and Buddhist communities in Meiktila, a town in Burma’s Mandalay Division, following a dispute at a Muslim-owned gold shop. 

According to local sources, several people have been killed. There was also widespread damage to property in the town, including the destruction of mosques and a government building. 

Tensions between Muslim and Buddhists have been heightened in certain parts of Burma, such as in Rakhine state where violence erupted in June 2012. 

Amnesty International’s Deputy Asia Pacific Director Isabelle Arradon, said: 

“These latest reports of violence are very worrying, and show that tension between the two communities is spreading to other parts of the country. There is a real risk of further violence unless the authorities take immediate steps to protect those at risk. 

“There should also be an immediate and impartial investigation into the recent violence so that those responsible can be held to account.

“The authorities are responsible for ensuring protection of people, their homes and livelihoods. While doing so, they must ensure protection of all communities without discrimination. 

“It is imperative that the cycle of violence is not repeated.”

Police were deployed to Meiktila after the incident and a curfew has been put in place. 

In June violence erupted between the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine state, leaving scores dead and injured, and leading to widespread destruction and displacement. Both communities have been affected by the violence, but the Muslim communities, including the Rohingya minority community, have been the primary victims. 

A government-appointed commission was established in August 2012 to investigate the violence between Buddhists and Muslim communities in Rakhine state. It is expected to submit its report to the president of Burma and release it publicly at the end of March.
(Photo: Sithu Lwin Facebook)
Burma Task Force
March 21, 2013

A New “Killing Field” in Burma 

Two days of rioting have left at least five dead – some reports say 14 -- and two mosques burned down in central Burma. These numbers are also normally grossly underreported in Burma, which has strict control of information in the country, so the death toll is largely much higher. 

The New York Times is reporting that a mob of Buddhists, some of them monks, started the rioting in the Muslim quarter of Meiktila, a city in central Burma. 

One reporter who witnessed the attacks told the New York Times that the scene was “like a killing field.” 

“Even the police told me that they could not handle what they witnessed,” said Wunna Naing. “Children were among the victims.” 

The most disturbing part of these attacks against Muslims is that this violence has spread from Rakhine State and the persecuted Rohingya Muslims to other parts of Burma. Buddhists are now rising up against Muslims who are considered citizens of the country, unlike the Rohingya, who have been denied citizenship in their ancestral land and are discriminated against because of their dark skin. 

Just last month, Buddhists attacked what they said was a masjid being built without permission in Yangon. 

Urgent Action Needed 

Call the Burmese embassy and tell them that the government needs to facilitate peace between Buddhist and Muslim citizens. The first step in this is to publicly acknowledge Rohingya Muslims as citizens. Meiktila police also need to properly prosecute those involved in the riots, including Buddhist monks that took part in the violence. 

Also call the Secretary of State’s office and tell John Kerry that he needs to push Burmese leadership to take responsibility to safeguard ALL of its citizens. 

Make a Phone Call TODAY 

Call the Burmese Embassy at (202) 332-3344, (202) 332-4350 and (202) 332-4352 or send an email to pyi.thayar@verizon.net. 

Call the Secretary of State’s office at (202) 647-5291, then press Option #1 and then Option #8. 

Request Our Literature! 

If you’re interested in requesting pamphlets to put up in your local masjid or community center, send an email to info@burmamuslims.org. We have already sent out a number of pamphlets to communities that have requested them. The pamphlet includes information on what is going on in Burma, what the Burma Task Force is doing and action you can take, such as signing petitions and making phone calls to ambassadors. 

BURMA TASK FORCE COALITION PARTNERS

A crowd of people (including monks, in orange robes) gathered outside Muslim-owned stores that were trashed and set on fire in Meikhtila on Wednesday.

March 22, 2013

Photos and videos coming out of the central Burmese town of Meikhtila show rioting and attacks against Muslim-owned businesses, in the country’s worst communal violence since last year's clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in the eastern part of the country. The ungoing unrest has left at least 10 people dead, according to a member of parliament from Meikhtila District.

The source of the conflict remains murky. But both local police sources and Muslim activists agree that it all started with an argument between a Muslim gold-shop owner and Buddhist customers on Wednesday morning. From there, the stories diverge. A police source cited by Radio Free Asia says the shop owner broke an item belonging to the customers, leading to a brawl; Muslim activists, citing local sources, say the customers tried to sell the shop owner fake gold. Either way, the dispute quickly drew a crowd that attacked the goldsmith’s store as well as other Muslim-owned businesses.

A mob attacks Muslim-owned stores in Meikhtila on Wednesday. This video was relayed by Burmese Muslim activists living abroad.

Rioting continued during the night and into Thursday, with plumes of smoke rising around the town; a curfew declared by the authorities was evidently ignored. Several mosques were reportedly torched. 

Police say that at least two of the confirmed dead are Buddhists, one of them a monk. An AFP photographer who was able to visit the town Thursday said he saw at least three burned bodies and houses on fire. 

According to MP Win Thein, who hails from Meikhtila and belongs to the opposition National League for Democracy party, there are about 30,000 Muslims in the township, out of about 80,000 total residents. 

Muslims represent about four percent of Burma’s population, according to the last census. A wave of clashes between Buddhists and ethnic Rohingya, a Muslim minority, in eastern Rakhine State last year left at least 200 dead and more than 100,000 homeless, with many Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh. Last month, a Buddhist mob attacked a Muslim school and Muslim-owned stores in a suburb of Rangoon.

The aftermath of attacks on Muslim-owned stores on Wednesday. Police can be seen keeping a crowd at bay. Photo via Rohingya Blogger.

"Eyewitnesses I spoke to thought the mob violence might have been organised ahead of time"

Nay San Lwin is a Burmese Muslim activist living in exile in Germany. He contributes to the website Rohingya Blogger. He was able to speak to Meikhtila residents on Wednesday and Thursday morning; communications became more difficult on Thursday afternoon, when some of his sources fled town and stopped answering their phones.
The eyewitnesses I spoke to told me that hundreds of people gathered to destroy Muslim-owned businesses in a very short time span, which they found suspicious – like it was perhaps organised ahead of time. They said many had sticks with them, and used them to destroy the inside of the goldsmith’s store and others. Later, in the evening, they started lighting mosques and Muslims’ homes on fire. The police just stood by. 
Mobs also surrounded an Islamic religious school, trapping teenage students and teachers inside. [Several Muslim Burmese activists, citing local contacts, believe that some of them were killed after the school was set on fire this morning. Local authorities have said that a school was burned, but did not mention any deaths. FRANCE 24 has so far been unable to independently confirm these claims]. 
The Muslims I’ve talked to in Meikhtila are terrified. Many have shut themselves up inside their homes, for fear of being killed if they leave; but many others have already fled town [Buddhists have reportedly fled the violence as well]. They feel like there is nobody to protect them there. 
"Muslims in Burma don't have anyone to turn to for help" 
Several leaders from the 88 Generation Students’ group [an activist group led by people who participated in the 1988 pro-democracy students’ revolt, which was quashed by the military junta at the time] travelled to the town today, to try to calm the situation. But it seems that the mobs aren’t listening to them at all. [Editor’s Note: Min Ko Naing, one of the members of the 88 Generation who travelled to Meikhtila on Thursday, told Radio Free Asia: “We would like to request everyone to stop spreading violence. Most local residents are trying to prevent the unrest from spreading.”] 
Over the last few decades, the authorities in Burma have trained the population to hate Muslims. Many leaders use derogatory terms for Muslims in public, like "kalar". Recently, things have become even worse with the conflict in Rakhine state and the increasing influence of a powerful monk in Mandalay, Wirathu [Editor’s Note: Wirathu is known for his Islamophobic views. According to several Muslim Burmese activists, he recently visited Meikhtila, where he reportedly criticised the fact that many businesses were owned by Muslims]. We don’t have anyone to turn to for help. Not even Aung San Suu Kyi [Burma’s opposition leader, who after years of house arrest, now has a seat in parliament] will help us, because in Burma, speaking out for Muslims means losing votes. 
Police imposed a curfew overnight to control the situation after ten people were killed and several mosques burned in the violence
Onislam.net
March 21, 2013

MEIKTILA, Burma – At least ten people were killed and several mosques have been destroyed in a new bout of sectarian violence between Buddhists and Muslims in central Burma.

"About three mosques were destroyed," a local police officer told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by telephone on Thursday, March 21.

An argument between a Buddhist couple and gold shop owners degenerated into deadly riots in the central town of Meiktila.

An initial report on the police Facebook page late on Wednesday said anger spread after one man was injured during the row in the gold shop.

A mob then descended on the area and destroyed several mosques and an Islamic school in the area.

Police imposed a curfew overnight to control the situation after ten people were killed in the violence.

“We can't say the situation is under control,” Win Htein, a member of the opposition National League for Democracy party, told Reuters.

“The police force is not strong enough to control the situation.”

Tension between Muslims and Buddhists in Burma has been simmering since last year’s sectarian violence in western Rakhine state, which displaced thousands of Muslims.

Burma’s Muslims -- largely of Indian, Chinese and Bangladeshi descent -- account for an estimated four percent of the roughly 60 million population.

Muslims entered Burma en masse for the first time as indentured laborers from the Indian subcontinent during British colonial rule, which ended in 1948.

But despite their long history, they have never fully been integrated into the country.

Fears

The riots raise concerns that sectarian violence between Muslims and Buddhists could spread across the country.

"The situation is unpredictable," Hein Thu Aung, a 29-year-old local man, told AFP.

"I can't guess what will happen next. The violence could get worse -- everyone here is aggressive."

Win Htein, a member of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) in the town, is also pessimistic.

"What is happening now is religious tension. We are trying to calm the situation down," he said, adding that the situation was "tense".

"I haven't seen this kind of conflict in Meiktila in my life."

Senior government officials said they were monitoring the situation in Meikhtila while roads linking it to other major cities in the region have been temporarily closed.

"It is very important to understand that there are those who want to create racial and sectarian violence out of ordinary crimes," Min Ko Naing, of the pro-democracy 88 Generation Peace and Open Society group, said.

Burma is about 90 percent Buddhist and the majority are ethnically Burman, but the remaining people are a diverse group of over 100 ethnic and religious minorities.Treating Buddhism as the state de facto religion, the Buddhist Burman majority was singled out as the trustworthy pillar of national identity.
(Photo: Eleven Media Group)
M.S. Anwar 
RB Analysis 
March 21, 2013 

You have recently been alerted about the systematic approaches and plans of Rakhine Extremists and their leaders to massacre Rohingyas twice more in 4th week of March and 2nd week of April respectively. Government has been being providing trainings to Rakhines on how to use guns and swords. Rakhine extremists have been being distributing anti-Muslim leaflets among Rakhine community all over Arakan. Yet, until yesterday, we hadn’t had any clue on how Burmese (including Rakhine) extremists would initiate or trigger anti-Muslim violence. 

Yesterday morning, a Burmese couple, in order to sell their FAKE Gold, came to a Muslim’s jewelry shop in Meikhtila Township, Mandalay Division. When the Muslim shop owner refused to buy the fake gold, a brawl took place and reportedly the fake gold seller (the husband) got injured. They went back to their village and came up with his co-villagers to attack Muslims in the township. According to some people, the fake gold seller was a spy of Burmese military who had been trying to incite the violence for weeks. 

In the attack, yesterday, eight Mosques were burnt down, 3 Muslims were killed and 15 Muslims got injured. A few Muslim houses were also razed. The names of the Mosques burnt down were: 

(1) Mingala-Zayune Masjid and Madrasa (Religious School) 
(2) Myo Oo Masjid 
(3) Pakistan Masjid 
(4) Hman-Lun Masjid 
(5) Jameh Masjid at the west from the Market 
(6) Peace Masjid 
(7) North Pye-Thaya Masjid 
(8) Thiri Mingala Masjid 

The Imam (teacher) of the Myo Oo Masjid was among the killed Muslims. Meanwhile, a Monk, as he was trying to set fire, died getting blocked in a burning Masjid. (Fig. Ref: Kay Te Zat O) 

According to the latest reports, at 11AM today, 28 Hafiz (students of Learning Quran by-heart) including Hafiz Student Mohammed Ihtishaam S/o Hazrat Maulana Hafiz Nurul Haque and 4 more Imams (the teacher of the Mosques and Madrasa) were also killed by the barbaric Burmese extremists. Blazing of Muslims’ houses is still going on and Muslims are running for their lives. The names of the martyred imams are: 

(1) Maulana Mohammed Shafie (Around 45) 
(2) Maulana Zakaria (Around 40) 
(3) Mufti Wajib (Around 30) 
(4) Unidentified yet. 

Amidst the declaration of Martial Law under section 144, the Burmese hooligans are set free to torch Muslims’ houses. Rather, Security Forces were seen talking in friendly terms with the hooligans. Therefore, there is no doubt that Security Forces itself involve in it and it is, in most cases, similar to the anti-Rohingya violence in Arakan. And it might be called the beginning of the new era of anti-Muslim violence all over Myanmar backed by the central government. As usual, Burmese domestic media especially Eleven Media Group dominated by Rakhine racists took up the role of spreading wrong propaganda and fooling the innocent Burmese people in order to persuade them to involve in the violence. 

At a time when people are showing their sympathy to the victimized farmers in La-Pan-Taung, Sagaing Division and their attentions are given towards the victims, triggering an anti-Muslim violence is the perfect way to divert the attention of the people and continue the Copper Project. Besides, it is a chance for the pseudo-civilian government led by Thein Sein to gain public supports and for NLD to take them back to the earlier position. And for the military, they can coup power and crawl back to the dictatorship. Last but not the least, it is the opportunity that the leaders of Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) have been seeking to massacre and cleanse Rohingyas with the support of and in solidarity with all Burmese. 

    • Rohingya Exodus