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Toll Rises as Sectarian Violence in Myanmar Spreads to Nearby Villages Myanmar Troops Sent to City Torn by Sectarian Rioting
(about 20 hours later)
BANGKOK — Rioting and arson attacks spread on Friday to villages outside a city in central Myanmar where clashes between Buddhists and Muslims have left at least 20 people dead, according to residents, a member of Parliament and local journalists. A picture of chaos and anarchy emerged from the city of Meiktila, where mobs of Buddhists, some of them led by monks, have ransacked and burned Muslim neighborhoods since Wednesday. BANGKOK — As a picture of chaos and anarchy emerged from a city in central Myanmar on Friday, President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in the area and ordered the military to assist in quelling rioting that residents say has left at least 20 people dead.
U Aung Soe, a reporter for a local weekly journal, said he saw 15 charred bodies on the streets Friday morning. He estimated the death toll at more than 40. Deployment of troops in the city — residents reported seeing soldiers entering on Friday — carries heavy political implications in Myanmar after five decades of military rule until Mr. Thein Sein inaugurated his civilian government in 2011.
Mobs of rioters attacked Muslims’ houses in villages outside Meiktila on Friday, Mr. Aung Soe said. The religious violence in the city of Meiktila has underlined what local residents say is a vacuum of authority in a country that only two years ago was a police state.
Security forces, which during decades of military rule brutally suppressed any signs of unrest, seemed unable or unwilling to stop the rioting, according to witnesses. Rioting and arson attacks spread on Friday to villages outside Meiktila, as mobs of Buddhists, some led by monks, continued a three-day rampage through Muslim areas. Witnesses reached by phone said security forces did little to stop the violence.
Nyan Lin, a former political prisoner, told the Mizzima news agency that the police “just stood watching the rioters, and did not take any action.” “Mobs were destroying buildings and killing people in cold blood,” said U Nyan Lynn, a former political prisoner who witnessed what he described as massacres. “Nobody stopped them — I saw hundreds of riot police there.”
Video footage from Meitkila posted on Friday showed harrowing scenes of what appeared to be Muslim women and men cowering as they fled the violence. News services, which had reporters in the city, said that Buddhist homes had also been set on fire and that while thousands of Muslims had fled to a stadium for safety, at least some Buddhists were also taking shelter outside their homes, in shrines.
The Associated Press quoted a member of Parliament from Meiktila, U Win Htein, as saying that at least five mosques had been burned since the violence started Wednesday. Mr. Win Htein said the death toll was at least 20. Local residents were preventing authorities from putting out fires in the city, he told The A.P. Images from Meiktila showed entire neighborhoods burned to the ground, some with only blackened trees left standing. Lifeless legs poked from beneath rubble. And charred corpses spoke to the use of fire as a main tool of the rioting mobs.
Journalists said they feared for their safety after Buddhist monks, one of them wielding a sword, forced them to hand over the memory cards in their cameras. “I can’t handle what I saw there,” said Daw Nilar Thein, a human rights activist. She described the violence as anarchic and unspeakable.
On Thursday, Buddhists, including monks from nearby monasteries, led a rampage through the Muslim quarter of the city of Meiktila seeking to avenge the death of a monk the day before, according to a news photographer who witnessed the fighting. One video posted to Facebook by Radio Free Asia on Friday showed Muslim women and men cowering and shielding their heads from flying objects as they fled their attackers. Onlookers are overheard shouting, “Oooh! Look how many of them. Kill them! Kill them!”
“The area was like a killing field,” said the photographer, Wunna Naing. “Even the police told me that they could not handle what they witnessed. Children were among the victims.” The three days of violence have been too chaotic to establish a precise death toll — and officials reached by telephone refused to answer questions about casualties. But estimates among witnesses rose as high as 50, with one news photographer counting 15 corpses in the streets on Friday morning alone.
Muslims and Buddhists have clashed several times in western Myanmar over the past year, but the fighting in Meiktila has raised fears that religious strife is reaching into the heartland of the country. Some witnesses also wondered whether the violence had been organized. State news agencies in Myanmar said the fighting began on Wednesday after a dispute in a Muslim-owned gold shop. The Associated Press said the customers were Buddhist. But the severity of the violence suggests that deeply held hatred in the city, buried during five decades of military rule, is surfacing with the country’s newfound democratic freedoms.
News agency photographs showed gruesome scenes of devastation, with homes burned to the ground, thick black clouds rising above a mosque that residents say was attacked, and a charred corpse. Just as in western Myanmar, where more than 150 people have been killed in clashes between Buddhists and Muslims over the past year, those behind the violence in Meiktila tried to stop images of the destruction from getting out. On Friday, a group of Buddhist monks threatened news photographers, including one who works for The Associated Press, with a sword and homemade weapons. With a monk holding a blade to his neck, U Khin Maung Win, the A.P. photographer, handed over his camera’s memory card.
Muslims residents have fled the city and gathered in a sports stadium, according to Reuters. “We are trying to leave the town,” Mr. Khin Maung Win said by telephone. “They are now after journalists, too.”
The clashes on Wednesday appeared to have started with a disagreement in a gold shop owned by a Muslim family. The notion of Buddhists, especially monks, rampaging through Muslim neighborhoods with weapons is jarring to the outside world. But it follows the same pattern of violence seen in western Myanmar over the past year, where radical monks have helped to stir up hatred against Muslim ethnic group members who call themselves Rohingya.
Religious violence has shaken the government of President Thein Sein over the past year as the gradual rollback of five decades of authoritarian rule has coincided with a rise in nationalism and racial and religious hatred. Compared to the Rohingya strife, the violence in Meiktila is considered by many Burmese to be more threatening to the democratization process because it is in the country’s heartland.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is about 90 percent Buddhist, with the rest of the population Christian, Muslim and animist. After two years of civilian rule, Myanmar harbors both the optimism of opening its economy to the world and the pitfalls of ethnic and religious strife.
More than 150 people, most of them Muslims, have been killed since June in Buddhist-Muslim clashes in Rakhine State, a sliver of land in western Myanmar where religious hatred runs high. Some vocal Buddhist monks have been stridently anti-Muslim after those communal clashes, which pitted Buddhists against a group of Muslims who call themselves Rohingya and are not recognized as citizens of the country. A visit to Myanmar on Friday by Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, underlined the country’s chances for greater prosperity after the disastrous socialist rule of previous military governments.
On Thursday, a leading monk in the country, Ashin Nyanissara, called for restraint in Meiktila, saying in an interview with the Democratic Voice of Burma that “all religions should live peacefully with loving kindness and tolerance.” Mr. Schmidt told an audience in Yangon, the commercial capital, that the country was cementing its new freedoms by connecting itself to the world. “The Internet will make it impossible to go back,” he said, news agencies reported.
Until this week, there were hopes that religious conflicts would be contained to the Rakhine region. But the clashes in Meiktila are renewing concerns that religious strife will surface in other cities in Myanmar, which are typically multiethnic, a legacy of British colonial rule. But the freeing of the Internet, which was heavily censored during military rule, has also helped spread hatred and intolerance in the country, especially against Muslims. Although predominantly Buddhist, Myanmar is a patchwork of ethnicities and languages, especially in cities, where it is not uncommon for a Buddhist pagoda, mosque, church and Hindu temple to be within blocks of one another.
There have been signs of rising tensions. Last month in a township on the outskirts of Yangon, the commercial capital, Buddhists attacked what they said was a mosque being built without permission. While some signs Friday night pointed to a calming of the situation, many Muslims and Buddhists in the affected area remained wary and separated.
Meiktila, a garrison city with a strong military presence, is halfway between the new capital, Naypyidaw, and the old royal city of Mandalay. Reports from residents indicated that the military units based in the city had not yet joined the police in helping to quell the violence. Muslims have been put in Meiktila’s sports stadium, where, according to one report, food and water are scarce. Photographs show frightened-looking people rushing to the stadium, clutching belongings and carrying their children and the elderly.
The police in Meiktila, reached by telephone, declined to comment on the violence. There have been a number of voices of restraint in Myanmar as the violence escalated. U Min Ko Naing, a prominent former political prisoner, pleaded with a crowd in Meiktila in the video posted on Friday.
Two mosques and a Muslim school were burned, residents said, and many houses in the Muslim quarter were destroyed. “We need the full security of our lives and property,” he said. “Our children and women must not live in fear.”
The authorities declared a curfew on Thursday for the second consecutive night. A leading monk in the country, Ashin Nyanissara, also called for restraint, saying in an interview with the Democratic Voice of Burma on Thursday that “all religions should live peacefully with loving kindness and tolerance.”

Thomas Fuller reported from Bangkok, and Wai Moe from Yangon, Myanmar.

Wai Moe contributed from Yangon, Myanmar.