Myanmar Town Restive After Clashes

By SHIBANI MAHTANI And CELINE FERNANDEZ
Police and soldiers patrolled the town of Lashio on Thursday, the latest flashpoint in clashes between the Buddhist majority and minority Muslims in Myanmar, detaining 34 people and guarding makeshift shelters for hundreds of Muslims displaced in the violence, according to officials and witnesses.

Associated Press
A man rides a motorcycle Thursday near a burned building that housed an orphanage for Muslim children in Lashio, Myanmar.

The latest outbreak of sectarian violence left one person dead and four others injured, officials said, underscoring the challenges facing President Thein Sein as he tries to shift Myanmar from decades of military dictatorship to civilian rule.
Separately, Myanmar authorities and ethnic Kachin rebels agreed on a cease-fire they hope will lead to a broader peace agreement and quell the Southeast Asian country’s last armed ethnic conflict. Fighting between the two sides in December and January threatened to spill into neighboring China, the country’s largest foreign investor.
Ethnic and sectarian tension has threatened the stability of the country as it courts badly needed international investment. Consulting group McKinsey & Co. warned in a report this week that companies entering this promising emerging market risk disappointment and that the country could lose international goodwill if tensions remain unresolved.
In Lashio, the most important town in northeastern Myanmar, more than 400 Muslims, some of whom had homes burned and destroyed by armed mobs, took to makeshift shelters in two separate Buddhist monasteries, too afraid to stay in their neighborhoods or at their own damaged religious sites. A curfew remained in place.
The violence broke out Tuesday and continued into Wednesday, leaving three Muslim schools, a mosque, three dozen shops and several homes destroyed. “There was weak police security. Only after the conflict and death did they arrive,” said Zan Zar Ni Aung, a Muslim resident in Lashio, in a telephone interview. Police weren’t available to comment.
Ye Htut, spokesman for President Thein Sein, on his official Facebook page condemned the violence, saying it was “inappropriate for a democratic society” and that the violence would be “dealt with according to the law.”
He said authorities were “carefully inspecting” people coming into Lashio, hoping to keep out those intending on raising more trouble.
Maung Maung, advocate-general of the town, said police detained 34 people, including a Muslim man who sparked the violence by allegedly dousing a Buddhist woman with gasoline and setting her on fire. She survived with minor injuries, he said, but rumors of her death had inflamed mobs who launched the attacks Tuesday. All but four of those detained were Buddhist, he said.
According to witnesses and local journalists, one of those injured in the clashes was a local reporter targeted by the mob.
The cease-fire between the government and the Kachins pledges to hold a political dialogue and to resettle displaced people, estimated in the thousands. “What we want is peace. With the political settlement, there will be no more armed conflicts and that will lead to a lasting cease fire,” said Dr. Laja, the General-Secretary of the Kachin Independence Organization, who goes by just one name.
The on-and-off talks over several months were closely watched by the international community, particularly China, which has major infrastructure investments in the region.
— Myo Myo contributed to this article.
Write to Shibani Mahtani at shibani.mahtani@wsj.com and Celine Fernandez at Celine.Fernandez@wsj.com

Link: Myanmar Town Restive After Clashes