State of emergency declared in violence-hit Myanmar town

Myanmar President Thein Sein has announced a state of emergency in the central town of Meiktila following three days of deadly unrest.

Fresh clashes between extremist Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Meiktila, located some 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the capital city of Naypyidaw, have left at least 20 people dead so far. Clashes erupted late on Wednesday after extremist Buddhists set fire to several mosques in the city.

Parts of the town have been reduced to ashes as a result of arson attacks. The situation has been extremely tense on the third day of the violence. Groups of men and monks — armed with knives — have been moving around the town to hunt Muslims.

Hundreds of Muslim residents have fled their homes to take shelter at a sports stadium.

The unrest comes amid heightened tensions between the two sides which have left at least 180 people dead and more than a 100,000 Muslims displaced since June 2012.

On October 21, 2012, at least 11 Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar were killed after extremist Buddhists set fire to their houses in two Muslim villages in the city of Sittwe in the western Rakhine state.

The silence of the human rights organizations toward abuses against the Rohingya Muslims has emboldened the extremist Buddhists and Myanmar’s government forces.

The Buddhist-majority government of Myanmar refuses to recognize Rohingyas and has classified them as illegal migrants, even though the Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century.