By TODD PITMAN
LASHIO, Myanmar (AP) — It was a
terrifying sight: hundreds of angry, armed men on motorcycles advancing up a
dusty street with no one to stop them.
Shouting at the top of their
lungs, clutching machetes and iron pipes and long bamboo poles, they thrust
their fists repeatedly into the air.
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 on Wednesday,
at least one person was dead and four injured as this northeastern town of
Myanmar became the latest to fall prey to the country'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 the northeastern city of 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 man was arrested. The woman was hospitalized
with burns on her chest, back and hands.
Mobs took revenge by burning down
several Muslim shops and one of the city's main mosques, along with an Islamic
orphanage that was so badly charred that only two walls remained, said Min
Thein, a resident contacted by telephone.
On Wednesday fires still
smoldered at the ruined mosque, where a dozen charred motorcycles lay on the
sidewalks underneath its white minarets. Army troops stood guard. The wind
carried the acrid smell of several burned vehicles across town, and most
Muslims hid in their homes.
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," she
said, recounting how she had shut the wooden doors of her shop. "We were
terrified."
A couple hours later, the mobs
were gone and two army trucks and a small contingent of soldiers guarded the
villa. "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.
"Damaging religious buildings
and creating religious riots is inappropriate for the democratic society we
are trying to create," presidential spokesman Ye Htut said on his
Facebook page. "Any criminal act will be dealt with according to the
law," he said.
National police said nine people
were arrested for involvement in the two days of violence, but didn't say if
they were Buddhists or Muslims.
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."
A local freelance journalist,
Khun Zaw Oo, said he was hit on the head with an iron pipe as he photographed
mobs ransacking shops. He said he managed to flee but a companion also holding
a camera was attacked and badly injured.
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. Most are still living in refugee camps.
This month, authorities in two
areas of Rakhine announced a regulation limiting Muslim families to two
children. The policy drew sharp criticism from Muslim leaders, rights groups
and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick
Ventrell on Tuesday said the U.S. opposes coercive birth limitation policies,
and called on Myanmar "to eliminate all such policies without
delay."
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. Earlier
this month, a court sentenced seven Muslims from Meikthila to prison terms for
their role in the violence.
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's administration has
been heavily criticized for not doing enough to protect Muslims. He vowed last
week during a trip to the U.S. that all perpetrators of the sectarian violence
would be brought to justice.
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