LASHIO, Myanmar: Hundreds of Muslim families sheltered in a heavily guarded Buddhist monastery yesterday after two days of violence in the northern Myanmar city of Lashio left Muslim properties in ruins and raised alarm over a widening religious conflict.
About 1,200 Muslims were taken to Mansu Monastery after Buddhist mobs terrorized the city on Wednesday, a move that could signal the resolve of a government criticized for its slow response to previous religious violence.
The unrest in Lashio, a city about 700 km (430 miles) from Myanmar’s commercial capital of Yangon, shows how far anti-Muslim violence has spread in the Buddhist-dominated country as it emerges from decades of hard-line military rule.
One man was killed and five people wounded in Wednesday’s clashes, presidential spokesman Ye Htut said in a statement.
A senior police officer, who declined to be identified, told Reuters the dead man was a Muslim and the five injured were Buddhists, including a journalist attacked by a Buddhist mob.
He said 300 soldiers and 200 police were enforcing security in Lashio, a city of 130,000 people near Myanmar’s northeastern border with China.
The authorities moved quickly to stem the violence in Lashio by deploying troops, banning unlawful assembly under a state of emergency, and setting up roadblocks to stop troublemakers entering the city.
Spokesman Ye Htut said 25 people were under investigation for the violence.
When religious unrest erupted in the central city of Meikhtila in March, it took three days of fighting before the authorities took decisive action. At least 44 people died there.
Khaing Aung, director general of the religious affairs ministry, said the government had learned from past experiences.
“Since we are taking action, people understand there should be no more violence,” he said.
Thein Maing, who sheltered at the monastery with his wife and six children, said they only dared leave their house when they saw soldiers patrolling the streets on Wednesday. “I approached the soldiers and said, ‘We are afraid and we don’t know where to go. Please help us’, and they sent us here.” Khin Kyi’s family hid in the house of an ethnic Chinese neighbor, while Buddhist men with sticks and swords prowled the area.
“We were very scared. This has never happened before,” she said, sitting amid bags of clothes in the crowded prayer hall, overlooked by statues of Buddha. Badanta Ponnya Nanda, the head monk, said he hoped the city would be secure enough for Muslims to return to their homes within a week. “Today we need to calm everything down,” he said.
Shops reopened as police and soldiers patrolled the streets. There was no sign of the Buddhist youths who had marauded through town, burning Muslims out of their homes a day before.
Kyaw Kyaw Han, a soldier, stood guard outside a ransacked mosque littered with broken glass and religious books. Benches had been overturned and air conditioning units ripped out.
“We are here to guard against people starting fires,” he said.
Spokesman Ye Htut said three religious buildings were destroyed, including a large mosque in the city center, along with 32 shops and a cinema. Ruins smoldered on Thursday and the area was cordoned off.
There did not appear to be any Muslims nearby. The violence was sparked by reports on Tuesday that a Muslim man had badly burned a Buddhist woman. State-run MRTV television said Ne Win, 48, had poured petrol over Aye Aye Win, 24, who sold fuel by the side of the road, and set her on fire.
After police detained Ne Win, Buddhists surrounded the police station and demanded he be handed over. Badanta Ponnya Nanda, head monk of Mansu Monastery, said he tried to reason with the crowd, telling them to respect the law.
“After that they went and burned the mosque,” he said.
Muslims make up about 5 percent of the estimated 60 million people in Myanmar.
The unleashing of ethnic and religious hatred since 49 years of military rule ended in March 2011 raises questions over whether reformist President Thein Sein has full control over the security forces as the country goes through its most dramatic changes since a coup in 1962.
The most serious unrest has come in Rakhine State in the west of the country, starting in June last year.
In October, there were organized attacks by Rakhine Buddhists on Rohingya Muslim communities that New York-based Human Rights Watch said amounted to ethnic cleansing. The government calls the stateless Rohingya illegal “Bengali” immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.
Troops patrol Myanmar city hit by sectarian violence
Troops patrol Myanmar city hit by sectarian violence
Justice Department says it’s releasing 3 million pages from its Jeffrey Epstein files
- The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act
- “Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people,” Blanche said
NEW YORK: The Justice Department said Friday that it was releasing many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.
The files, which were being posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.
The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a news conference announcing the disclosure.
The prospect of previously unseen records tying Epstein to famous figures has long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have clamored for a full accounting that even Blanche acknowledged might not be met by the latest document dump.
“There’s a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don’t think will be satisfied by review of these documents,” he said.
He insisted that, “We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect — or not protect — anybody,” Blanche said.
After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted, or blacked out.
Among the materials being withheld from release Friday is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of potential victims of sex abuse. All women other than Maxwell have been redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.
The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to roughly six million, including duplicates, the department said.
The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.
Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.
Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his home in Palm Beach, but the US attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.
US prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.
Among the people she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after the scandal led to him being stripped of his royal titles. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia last year at age 41.
