Buddhist monks and others armed
with swords and machetes Friday stalked the streets of a city in central
Myanmar, where sectarian violence that has left about 20 people dead has begun
to spread to other areas, according to local officials.
Members
of the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Meiktila township have clashed this
week after a
dispute between a Muslim gold shop owner and two Buddhist
sellers Wednesday ignited simmering communal tensions.
Rioters
have set fire to houses, schools and mosques, prompting thousands of residents
to flee their homes amid unrest that had echoes of sectarian troubles that
killed scores of people in western Myanmar last year.
Late
Friday night, President Thein Sein announced on state television that four
townships in the affected region are under a state of emergency.
The
United Nations and the United States have expressed concern about the violence
in the lakeside city about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Mandalay.
Win Htein, an opposition member
of parliament for Meiktila, said the number of dead in the city has risen to
about 20 by his estimate -- most of them Muslims -- after charred bodies were
found in the streets.
"I
have not seen this scale of violence before in my life," he said. "I
am very sad. The community used to live in peace."
Myanmar
is emerging from decades of military repression and has taken a number of
significant steps toward democracy in recent years under President Thein Sein.
But it has been plagued by bouts of ethnic violence that some analysts say are
a byproduct of the changing political climate.
Burning mosques
A group
of about 100 Buddhists, including some monks, went around Meiktila on Thursday
night torching mosques, said Police Lt. Col. Aung Min, and while most of them
have returned home, some are still wandering the streets, carrying weapons.
Although
Aung Min declined to provide an official death toll, he said the violence had
spread to a nearby town, Win Twin, where a mosque was burned down overnight.
He said
about 1,000 Muslims had taken temporary shelter in a soccer stadium in
Meiktila, where about 30% of the 100,000 residents are estimated to be Muslims.
Win Htein
said he believed that more than 5,000 Buddhists had fled to monasteries around
the city to escape the violence.
Many
members of both communities had lost their homes, he said.
Journalists
in the city who tried to take photos of the clashes said they were threatened
by Buddhists, some of them monks, who were holding sticks and knives.
Violence in Rakhine
In the western
state of Rakhine,
tensions between the majority Buddhist community and the Rohingya, a stateless
ethnic Muslim group, boiled over into clashes that killed scores of people and
left tens of thousands of others living in makeshift camps last year.
Most of
the victims were Rohingya.
"The
ongoing intercommunal strife in Rakhine State is of grave concern," the
International Crisis Group said in a November report. "And there is the
potential for similar violence elsewhere, as nationalism and ethno-nationalism
rise and old prejudices resurface."
A failure
by authorities to address deepening divisions between the communities could
result in a resumption of violence in the future, the report said, "which
would be to the detriment of both communities, and of the country as a
whole."
Vijay
Nambiar, special adviser to the U.N. secretary-general on Myanmar, on Thursday
expressed "deep sorrow at the tragic loss of lives and destruction"
in Meiktila this week.
He called
for "firm action" from Myanmar authorities, combined with "the
continued fostering of communal harmony and preservation of peace and
tranquility among the people."
Win
Htein, the local lawmaker, said that he believed there were now about 1,000
police officers in the area.
He said
he had spoken to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate and leader of the
opposition National League for Democracy, who had said local authorities should
use police to control the situation according to the law.
The U.S.
ambassador to Myanmar, Derek Mitchell, said Thursday that he was "deeply
concerned" about the reports of violence.
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