Bloody battles in Burma kill TWENTY: Muslim and Buddhist rioters including MONKS burn neighbourhoods to the ground in worst sectarian violence since election
Worldwide, Daily news | ankakh | March 22, 2013 16:26Firefighters continue to battle huge blazes after three days of rioting between Muslims and Buddhists in central Myuanmar left at least 20 people dead.
The sectarian violence, the worst seen in Asia’s fledgling democracy since last year’s conflict, was sparked after an argument between a Muslim gold shop owner and his customers in the city of meikhtila.
As authorities began the clear up, there are fears that tensions between Myanmar’s predominantly Buddhist population and minority Muslims could spread throughout the country.
‘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.
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 spiralled into a riot involving hundreds of people, said police.
The United Nations warned the sectarian unrest could endanger a fragile reform programme launched after Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government replaced a decades-old military dictatorship in 2011.
Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, but about five percent of its 60 million people are Muslims.
Sectarian unrest is common in central Myanmar, although reports were stifled under the military dictatorship.
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