Myanmar Muslims face uncertain future after new sectarian attacks kill 1, burn scores of homes
(Khin Maung Win/ Associated Press ) - A Muslim man removes debris near a damaged mosque following fresh anti-Muslim violence broke out in Okkan, 64 kilometers (40 miles) north of Yangon, Myanmar, Wednesday, May 1, 2013. Hundreds of rampaging Buddhists armed with bricks on Tuesday, stormed a clutch of Muslim villages in the country’s latest outbreak of anti-Muslim violence.
OKKAN, Myanmar — They slept terrified in the fields, watching their homes burn through the night. And when they returned on Wednesday, nothing was left but smoldering ash and debris.
One day after hundreds of Buddhists armed with bricks stormed a clutch of Muslim villages in the closest explosion of sectarian violence yet to Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, newly displaced Muslims combed through the wasteland of their wrecked lives. Unable to go home, they faced an uncertain future — too fearful of more attacks even to leave.
“We ran into the fields and didn’t carry anything with us,” Hla Myint, a 47-year-old father of eight, said after the mobs overran his village.
Tears welling in his eyes, he added, “Now, we have nothing left.”
Thet Lwin, a deputy commissioner of police for the region, put the casualty toll from Tuesday’s assaults at one dead and nine injured. He said police have detained 18 attackers who destroyed 157 homes and shops and at least two mosques in the town of Okkan, 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Yangon, and three outlying villages.
The unrest was the first reported since late March, when similar Buddhist-led violence swept the town of Meikthila, further north in central Myanmar, killing at least 43 people. It underscored the failure of reformist President Thein Sein’s government to curb increasing attacks on minority Muslims in a nation struggling to emerge from half a century of oppressive military rule.
Muslim residents said a mixture of local villagers and people from nearby areas were responsible for the attacks around Okkan. Police gave no details on who was behind the assaults. But a local politician from the pro-government National Union party, Myint Thein, said members of a Buddhist campaign called “969” were involved.
The movement, which urges Buddhists to shop only at Buddhist stores and avoid marrying, hiring or selling their homes or land to Muslims, is small but has spread rapidly in recent months, and human rights activists say it has helped fuel anti-Muslim violence.
Stickers and signs bearing the 969 emblem — each digit enumerates virtues of the Lord Buddha, his teachings and the community of monks — have been popping up on shops, taxis, and buses in numerous towns and cities, including Yangon.
Hla Myint said that after the March violence, residents of Okkan began conducting informal security patrols to protect the village. But nothing happened for weeks and authorities told them not to worry.
“Things happened unexpectedly,” he told The Associated Press. “When the crowds came, they shouted things like ‘Don’t defend yourselves, we will only destroy the mosque, not your homes, we won’t harm you.’”
They burned his village’s mosque, whose corrugated iron roof lay crumpled on the ground between the building’s charred walls, and “they destroyed our houses” anyway, he said.
Around 300 police stood guard Wednesday in the area, which was quiet. Debris from trashed shops in Okkan spilled into dirt roadsides. The town’s market was crowded, but Muslims were absent.
OKKAN, Myanmar — They slept terrified in the fields, watching their homes burn through the night. And when they returned on Wednesday, nothing was left but smoldering ash and debris.
One day after hundreds of Buddhists armed with bricks stormed a clutch of Muslim villages in the closest explosion of sectarian violence yet to Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, newly displaced Muslims combed through the wasteland of their wrecked lives. Unable to go home, they faced an uncertain future — too fearful of more attacks even to leave.
