Myanmars divide widens

Aye Kyi was one of five Muslims killed in the attack on Thabyu Chaing last month. So far,in a year and a half of sporadic Buddhist-Muslim violence,more than 200 people,mostly Muslims,have died. But the killing of the helpless elderly woman and what followed is one of the starkest symbols of the breadth of anti-Muslim feelings in this Buddhist-majority country,the lack of sympathy for the victims and the failure of security forces to stop the killings.

The state-run news media obliquely reported the killings as casualties without details. And although the president ordered his office to directly investigate the deaths,there has been no national outcry.

For a culture that has such great respect for the elderly,the killing of this old lady should have been a moment of national soul searching, said Richard Horsey,a former United Nations official in the country. The fact that this has not happened is almost as disturbing as the killing itself.

The match that lit the violence in Thabyu Chaing,in the western state of Rakhine,as elsewhere,appeared to be the teachings of a radical Buddhist group,969,that preaches hatred and has influence throughout the countryside.

Muslim villagers say the authorities were aware of the danger because they received a call from the local police station on September 30,warning them of looming danger.

In the early hours of October 1,as a mob of several dozen men approached the village,the residents made urgent phone calls to the police and military units a few miles away. A single police vehicle arrived and dispersed a first wave of attackers before dawn. But the mob that killed Aye Kyi returned mid-morning,and police fled after firing into the air,villagers say.

Tomás Ojea Quintana,the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar,has criticised the government for the failure to intervene in the repeated bouts of violence against Muslims.

The October 1 incident was particularly awkward for President U Thein Sein as he was on a scheduled visit to the area at the time. Thein Sein said he urged the social,religious and community leaders to work with each other in finding solutions.

More than 70 people,including about 50 Buddhists,have been arrested since then.

When the first bouts of religious violence in Myanmar broke out in June 2012,the fighting was in a relatively circumscribed area near the border with Bangladesh and involved tensions between Buddhists and a stateless Muslim group known as the Rohingya,who are reviled by Myanmars Buddhists. But the violence here,several hundred miles away,underlines how the strife has metastasised into a nationwide anti-Muslim movement.

By the accounts,Aye Kyis village was a portrait of religious harmony. Lives of Muslims and Buddhists in the village were intertwined: Aye Kyi was born Buddhist and married a Muslim man,and three of her four children chose to become Buddhist. Buddhists and Muslims planted rice together and attended one anothers functions. Even when violence broke out elsewhere last year,the village remained calm.

Muslims say the spiralling hatred is largely due to influences from outside. They say Buddhist neighbours became more distant after the spiritual leader of the radical 969 movement,who talks about the threat of Islam,gave a sermon in a neighbouring village in April. Buddhist families shared his hate-filled videos.

In August,heeding a call by a private Buddhist organisation called the Preservation and Protection of National Races and Religion,Buddhist families hoisted Buddhist flags in front of their homes,the first time in living memory that villagers had done so.

To Muslims,the flags represented an us-and-them separation that allowed the mob to know which houses to spare.

They hate Islam,and they want it to disappear from the country, said Daw Than Than Nwe,a Muslim woman from the village.

The spiritual leader of 969,a monk named Ashin Wirathu,says Buddhism is under siege by Muslims,who are having more children than Buddhists. He says his group is not behind any of the killings,but many say his preachings incite the violence.

The immediate trigger for the October 1 violence,Buddhists say,was an episode in which a Muslim merchant insulted a Buddhist man for flying a Buddhist flag on his three-wheeled taxi.

U Einda Sara,the abbot of a large Buddhist temple in Myanmars most famous beach resort,Ngapali,is typical of extremist Buddhist monks who have great influence in Burmese society and are rarely publicly contradicted.

In an interview in his monastery,the abbot offered a version of the killing of the 94-year-old woman that stands in stark contradiction to police accounts. The abbot asserted that Aye Kyi ran away and died from lack of oxygen. Her body was probably mutilated by fellow Muslims to make Buddhists look bad,he said.