Myanmar Government Struggles to Contain Anti-Muslim Hostility
Myanmar’s government is struggling to contain anti-Muslim violence that touched the outskirts of the capital, Naypyitaw, at the weekend and forced it to send troops to patrol the streets in the town where the recent trouble started.
Four houses and a small mosque in Tatkon township on the northern edges of Naypyitaw were set ablaze late on Sunday, a civil servant in the capital told Reuters on Monday.
Communal tension, stifled under half a century of army rule, has resurfaced since President Thein Sein’s reformist government took office in 2011.
It has released dissidents and relaxed media censorship, but was also criticized for failing to quell last year’s violence in Rakhine State in western Myanmar. Official figures say 110 people were killed and 120,000 were left homeless, most of them Rohingya Muslims.
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