What Is Behind Burma’s Wave of Religious Violence?
Last month more than 40 people died in violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the central Burmese town of Meiktila. The BBC’s South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head looks at the causes of the violence.
At first sight it appears that Meiktila has been hit by a natural disaster. Entire neighbourhoods have been levelled, homes of brick and cement smashed to rubble.
Then you notice holes pounded into the walls that are still standing, clearly made by human hands. It was anger, not nature, that wreaked this destruction.
The families and shop-owners that occupied these buildings have disappeared. The only people are the scavengers, salvaging anything of value left in the ruins.
A Muslim community that dates back many generations has been wiped out.
Just outside the town centre people stop to look at a blackened patch of ground. This is where at least 20 Muslim boys were taken, from a madrassa, and hacked to death, their bodies soaked in petrol and set alight. Fragments of charred bones still lie in the ashes, beside discarded shoes.
On the surface Meiktila seems calm and orderly. Soldiers, who are supposed to be less visible in the new Burma, are back on the streets. A night-time curfew is being enforced.
But the events in March have shaken Meiktila’s member of parliament.
Win Htein is a man of proven courage, who spent 20 years in appalling conditions in prison because of his loyalty to Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. The former army captain has seen plenty of violence, but he still shakes his head in disbelief at what he witnessed last month.
“I saw eight boys killed in front of me. I tried to stop the crowd, I told them to go home. But they threatened me, and the police pulled me away.