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Showing posts with the label Meikhtila

Massacre of Muslims in Burma Ignored

Motorcycles pass in front of a mosque that was torched during rioting in Meikhtila in March. (Photo: Reuters) Irrawaddy News: July 8, 2013 MEIKHTILA — Their bones are scattered in blackened patches of earth across a hillside overlooking the wrecked Islamic boarding school they once called home. Smashed fragments of skulls rest atop the dirt. A shattered jaw cradles half a set of teeth. And among the remains lie the sharpened bamboo staves attackers used to beat dozens of people to the ground before drowning their still-twitching bodies in gasoline and burning them alive. The mobs that March morning were Buddhists enraged by the killing of a monk. The victims were Muslims who had nothing to do with it—students and teachers from a prestigious Islamic school in central Burma who were so close to being saved. In the last hours of their lives, police had been dispatched to rescue them from a burning compound surrounded by swarms of angry men. And when they emerged c...

Eyewitnesses recall atrocities in Meikhtila

Refugees pass time at a stadium amidst riots in Meikhtila on 22 March 2013. (Reuters) By Assed Baig DVB News: April  4, 2013 Reports of what actually took place in the central Burmese town of Meikhtila are still emerging, but internally displaced persons (IDPs) are beginning to speak out and tell the world of what they witnessed with their own eyes. “They beat them in front of me. I was watching. I can still see it.” Noor Bi, is crying as she describes the moment when she saw her husband and brother murdered in front of her eyes as she fled Meikhtila. The mob outnumbered the police and they were unable to protect the Muslim minority of the town. The 26-year-old is now a widow with a three-year-old son. As she told her story and what she witnessed, the people around her in the make shift IDP camp now set up in the grounds of a Muslim school in Yindaw – around 10 miles south of Meikhtila – began to cry. Grown men sobbed at hearing her ordeal. “They beat the...