Buddhist mobs spread panic among Myanmar’s Muslims

The object of their rage: Myanmar's embattled minority Muslim community.

Residents gaping at the spectacle backed away as the Buddhist mob passed. Worried business owners turned away customers and retreated indoors. And three armed soldiers standing in green fatigues on a corner watched quietly, doing nothing despite an emergency government ordinance banning groups of more than five from gathering.

Within a few hours Wednesday, at least one person was dead and four injured as the northeastern town of Lashio became the latest to fall prey to Myanmar's swelling tide of anti-Muslim unrest.

After a night of heavy rain, downtown Lashio was quiet Thursday morning. Soldiers blocked roads where Muslim shops were burned. At one corner where the charred remains of a building still smoldered, Muslim residents sorted through rubble for anything salvageable. One woman who had fled a mob a day earlier was still in a state of shock.

"These things should not happen," said the woman, Aye Tin, a Muslim resident. "Most Muslims are staying off the streets. They're afraid they'll be attacked or killed if they go outside."

The violence that started Tuesday in Lashio is casting fresh doubt over whether President Thein Sein's government can or will act to contain the racial and religious intolerance plaguing a deeply fractured nation still struggling to emerge from half a century of military rule. Muslims have been the main victims of the violence since it began in western Rakhine state last year, but so far most criminal trials have involved prosecutions of Muslims, not members of the Buddhist majority.

The rioting in Lashio started Tuesday after reports that a Muslim man had splashed gasoline on a Buddhist woman and set her on fire. The woman was hospitalized, and a 48-year-old Muslim suspect was arrested.

Mobs armed with sticks took revenge later the same day, roaming the streets of Lashio looking for Muslims and burning down several Muslim shops and one of the city's main mosques. .

Fear rippled through the streets, with terrified Muslim residents describing a 30-strong group of men with weapons cruising through Lashio on motorcycles and shouting anti-Muslim slogans.

When one group of thugs arrived at a Muslim-owned movie theater housed in a sprawling villa, they hurled rocks over the gate, smashing windows. They then broke inside and ransacked the cinema. Ma Wal, a 48-year-old Buddhist shopkeeper across the street, said she saw the crowd arrive. They had knives and stones, and came in two separate waves.

"I couldn't look. We were terrified," she said.

A couple of hours later, the mobs were gone and two army trucks and a small contingent of soldiers guarded the site. "I don't know what to think about it," she said. "More casualties are . . . not good for anybody."

The government, which came to power in 2011 promising a new era of democratic rule, appealed for calm. National police said nine people were arrested for involvement in the two days of violence, but didn't say if they were Buddhist or Muslim.

After nightfall, authorities could be heard issuing instructions on loudspeakers across the city, reminding residents a dusk-to-dawn curfew was in effect. The voice bellowing into the night also said: "You are prohibited from carrying sticks or swords or any kind of weapon."

Myanmar's sectarian violence first flared in western Rakhine state last year, when hundreds of people died in clashes between Buddhists and Muslims that drove about 140,000 others, mostly Muslims, from their homes. The majority are still living in refugee camps.

The clashes had seemed confined to the Rakhine region, but in late March, similar Buddhist-led violence swept the town of Meikthila in central Myanmar, killing at least 43 people. Several other towns in central Myanmar experienced less deadly violence, mostly involving the torching of Muslim businesses and mosques.

Muslims account for about 4 percent of Myanmar's roughly 60 million people. Anti-Muslim sentiment is closely tied to nationalism and the dominant Buddhist religion, so leaders have been reluctant to speak up for the unpopular minority.

Thein Sein, whose administration has been heavily criticized for not doing enough to protect Muslims, vowed last week during a trip to the U.S. that all perpetrators of the sectarian violence would be brought to justice.

Source: Japan Times