(Direct translation of nationalist monk Shin Wirathu’s letter from Myanmar Express blog.)
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| The Buddhist monk killed by Muslims in Meik-hti-lar. |
This is the true story of Meik-hti-lar incident between
Burmese Buddhists and Bengali Muslims there.
Today March 20 at about 9 in the morning U Khin Maung Win and
Daw Aye Aye Naing came to New Weint Sein gold shop (Muslim-owned) to sell their
gold comb. The husband and wife U Khin Maung Win (46) and Daw Aye Aye Naing
(45) were together with their two young children.
The Shop-owner Muslim woman Myint Myint Aye (a) She-tar then
broke the gold comb into two pieces and rubbed both pieces on their grading
stone and also applied acid on them. She then decided to offer only 50,000 kyats
for the gold worth at least 100,000 kyats.
The Buddhist couple refused to sell at that low price and
asked her to re-join two broken pieces together. The Muslim woman refused and
told them to leave and a heated argument broke out. They finally came to blow after
the Benmgali-Muslim shop-owner and her elder sister bitch slapped the Burmese-Buddhist
couple.
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| Map of Meik-hti-lar in Middle Burma. |
Daw Aye Aye Naing then started yelling out to the Burmese bystanders
for help. Meanwhile the Bengali-Muslim husband of the shop-owner Htun Htun Oo
(a) Ar-shit and his employee Nyi Nyi came in and started hitting U Khin Maung
Win with timber 2x4 pieces. They both were yelling out that the Burmese-Buddhist
couple and their children were trying to rob their gold shop.
As their Muslim relatives from other Muslim gold shops nearby
joined the brutal attack on the Burmese-Buddhist family the bystanders started
shouting at them to stop such unjust violence and they then called the police.
About twenty minutes later policemen arrived and they closed
New Weint Sein Muslim gold shop and arrested Htun Htun Oo (a) Ar-shit and Nyi
Nyi. But their accomplice Muslim women Myint Mtyint Aye (a) She-tar, Netty, and
Boat-pwa escaped through the rear entrance of their shop.
By then time was about 10 in the morning and the Burmese crowd
there was only about fifty. People thought that the escaping Muslim women were
hiding in the upstairs apartment of Taw-win Yadanar Muslim gold shop next door.
So they told police and the policemen went up there.
They found no Muslim women they were looking there except two
teenage Muslim girls ferafully hiding there from the gathering Burmese crowd.
Police and some local Buddhists then escorted them to safety through the angry
crowd. Some Burmese threw stones at them but nothing serious happened to them
as both Bengali-Muslim girls were wearing motorcycle helmets as precautions.
Buddhist crowds
gathered at the gold shop and the police station
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| Buddhist crowd at the destroyed gold-shops after the riots. |
When the police and their charges got back at the police station
there were big crowd of Burmese Buddhists waiting there. Requested by the
district administrator and district police chief the town elders asked the
crowd to disperse and at about 11 in the morning the crowd left the police
station.
But the crowd at the New Weint Sein gold shop were getting
bigger by the hour without a heavy police presence there and at about 1 in the
afternoon the crowd turned violent and started destroying the New Weint-Sein gold shop and
other Muslim gold shops in the area.
New Weint Sein, Taw-win Yadanar, Shwe Nandaw, Yunwady: all
Muslim-owned gold shops were completely destroyed. All were affluent three-stories
concrete buildings.
Burmese-owned Taing Chit gold shop was partly destroyed also as
it was too late when the Buddhist mob discovered the Buddhist statue and
Buddhist flag left inside the shop by the fleeing Buddhist owners.
By then about thirty riot police arrived at the scene but
they just watched the destruction as a group of Buddhist monks also arrived and
made an understanding with the police that they would control the Buddhist crowd not to target
other Muslim properties in the town except the Muslim gold shops they had already
started destroying.
As a precaution police detachments were sent to the mosques
all over town and policemen with shields and bamboo sticks stood guard right in
front of every mosque in Meik-hti-lar.
A Buddhist monk was
killed by Muslims and deadly riots spread
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| The Buddhist monk killed by Muslims in Meik-hti-lar. |
Unfortunately at that time a Buddhist monk from Hanzar
village of One-dwin township had come into the Meik-hti-lar town as a passenger
on a motorbike and they were unknowingly riding through the Da-hart-tan Muslim
ward the biggest Muslim quarters in Meik-hti-lar.
Already-agitated Muslims saw the Buddhist monk and chased the
motorbike and managed to strike the Buddhist monk from behind with a
sword and he fell to
the ground from his pillion-riding position on the motorbike. He had a
long deep gash on back of his head just above his left ear.
Despite the desperate pleas for mercy from the rider the Muslims
forcefully took off his robe and brutally dragged the direly-wounded
Buddhist
monk into the nearby Myo-ma Mosque. Once inside the mosque they poured
acid and petrol all over the wounded Buddhist monk and burned him
alive. Only his discarded-robe and a large pool of
blood were left at the spot on the road where he fell off the motor bike
wounded.
Once that tragic news reached the crowd at the gold shops
they immediately marched to Da-hart-tan Muslim ward and burned down the said Myo-ma
Mosque and the nearby Muslim houses.
Muslims there retaliated by burning the Burmese houses and striking
back at the attacking Buddhist mob. As Muslims were more numerous there many
Buddhists were killed and wounded in that Muslim ward.
There are now 16 wounded Buddhists in the Meik-hti-lar
Hospital and three were almost fatally wounded. So far one Burmese Buddhist
died at the hospital and a few burnt-out corpses of unknown race have been recovered
from the Muslim ward by the police.
During the riots a
Muslim man driving a ten-wheeler truck tried to run over Burmese mob but he was
hit in the eyes by Buddhists’ sling-shot balls and he lost control of his truck
which was stopped after hitting a concrete building. He was pulled down from
the truck and the Buddhist mob burned him alive.
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| Burmes-Buddhist mob attacking Thiri Mingala Mosque. |
The race riots were going on strong till 10 in the night when
the district administration has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew (Act-144) indefinitely
and the armed-riot-police battalions finally took over the whole town of
Meik-hti-lar.
By 10:30 in the night all the mosques in Meik-hti-lar were
burning and the local Muslims have taken all their young children, their women,
and their old people out of the town in a long convoy of cars and trucks seen heading
towards Taunggyi in the East. Only some Muslim men are left in the town to guard their
properties.
Muslim population of
Meik-hti-lar has dangerously swelled to the alarming level recently as the restless
Muslim refugees fleeing from the recent racio-religious riots and unrests in Kyak-pa-daung,
Kyauk-se, Ya-me-thin, and Taung-ngu and other places all over Burma had gathered
at Meik-hti-lar the middle junction of various highways in Burma.
(Translator's Notes: Meik-hti-lar is the epicenter of Buddhist
heartland in middle Burma. I used to know the area very well as my
paternal clan is from Ma-hlaing a large township just a few miles
north-west of Meik-hti-lar. The completely-Burmese area back then was
basically the cradle of extremely brutal civil war between the ruling
Socialists and the rebelling Communists in the whole 1950s.
Back then my late father Bo Htun Hla - an
ex-army officer from Japanese-trained BNA (Burma National Army) and one
of few trusted lieutenants of late General Aung San - was the Divisional
Commanding Officer of 5,000 strong Communist 3M (Ma-thone-lone)
Division controlling the triangular area of Mandalay-Meikhtilar-Myingyan
during late 1940s and early 1950s.
Of course the Burmese Communists (CPB) were defeated there by the
then-Socialists-controlled Burmese Army together with various Buddhist
militias financed and armed by U Nu - Kyaw Nyein Socialist government.
Burmese there are most brutally militant compared to other Burmese
anywhere else in Burma. In addition to the traditional weapons like
long swords (Nghet-kyee-daung Dah) and long spears (Hlan-shay) openly
carried by most men, most villages there has a cache or two of British
Lee-Enfield .303 rifles secretly buried in the village ground. And the
youths from that area are the main lifeblood of Burmese army which
recruits only the Buddhist Burmese.
There were hardly any Muslims in that area before the 1970s. It
seems now that within less than 40 years the invading Bengali-Muslims
with massive financial support from Saudi Arabia have become the
commercially dominant group building mosques and madrassas all over the
place and the native Burmese-Buddhists must have deeply resented them
and the eventual result is this racio-religious riots and the
Muslim-cleansing which will follow like in the recent Arakan riots.)
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| A Mosque and its madrassa burning in Meik-hti-lar. |
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Thiri Mingala Mosque, the largest mosque in Meik-hti-lar, before
it was burnt down by the Buddhist on 20 March 2013. |
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| A destroyed madrassa-cum-mosque in Meik-hti-lar. |
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| Destroyed Muslim gold shops in Meik-hti-lar's Myo-ma Bazaar. |
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| Destroyed Muslim gold shops in Meik-hti-lar's Myo-ma Bazaar. |
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| Riot-police battalion restoring law and order in Meik-hti-lar. |
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| Armed-Buddhist mob on a street as Meik-hti-lar's Muslim wards burned. |
original blog ;
http://hlaoo1980.blogspot.sg/2013/03/meik-hti-lar-burning-by-race-riots.html
