Violence escalates in Burma’s Rakhine State
Northwest Burma’s Rakhine state remains tense after President Thein Sein dispatched troops to try to end religious and ethnic violence. The riots began after 10 ethnic-Rohingya Muslims were mobbed and murdered by ethnic Rakhines, in retaliation for the gang-rape of a Rakhine girl.
Smoke rises from burned houses in Sittwe, Burma, the capital of the western state of Rakhine on Monday, June 11, 2012. Security forces tried to restore order after a wave of deadly religious violence has led to deaths, injuries and the burning of homes and businesses. Photo: AFP
The clashes that began on June 8 are the most severe in a string of violent attacks between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, the state’s largest minority group, and ethnic Rohingya Muslims, who are denied citizenship in both Burma and Bangladesh.
Both minority groups in the region claim to be under attack, but the Rohingya have a history of being a target of racism. Although many Rohingya communities have lived in Burma for decades, the government refuses to grant them citizenship – a position that has broad support among other Burmese nationals.
Even democracy leader and former political prisoner Ko Ko Gyi recently said he believed "so-called Rohingya" not to be one of the recognized Burmese ethnic groups.
Nicholas Farelly, a Burma analyst at Australia National University, says the Rohingya’s statelessness between Burma and Bangladesh is partially to blame for the conflict's escalation.
“The Rohingya, they fit somewhat awkwardly in that borderland between the two different political systems, they have nowhere to call home and, as a result from time to time, there are these episodes of conflict," said Farelly. "We have seen one of those very recently and it has in this case taken the form of Buddhist and Muslim mobs of varying sizes coming to blows.”
On Sunday, Thein Sein’s national address referenced what he called Burma’s “checkered” history of peaceful co-existence of among the country’s diverse ethnic groups. He condemned racial and religion-based violence, which he said could jeopardize the country’s democratic reforms.
In Bangkok on Monday, Maung Kyaw Nu of the Burmese Rohingya Association of Thailand asked the United Nations to intervene.
"Today, I am coming here to express, to hand over the letter to Mr. Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations," said Maung Kyaw Nu. "I would like his intervention, U.N. intervention, to save my people who are killed. Genocide is there. I'm coming here to ask his help, intervention as well as the global civil society's help."
The U.S. embassy issued a statement urging all parties to stop violent attacks and the government to hold a transparent investigation.
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