Violence in Mandalay

A  violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar’s second-largest city, on July 3 after security forces fired rubber bullets to disperse hundreds of rioters.

Police in Mandalay fired rubber bullets overnight on July 1 to disperse hundreds of rioters, some armed with sticks and knives, who attacked a Muslim tea shop after rumours circulated on the internet that one of its owners had raped a Buddhist waitress, reports said.

“There are two dead,” a police officer, who did not want to be named, told AFP by telephone from Mandalay on July 3, without providing further details.

In a radio address on July 3, President U Thein Sein called for an end to religious hatred.

“As our country is a multi-racial and -religious nation, the current reform process will be successful only when stability is maintained through the co-operation of all the citizens by living harmoniously with one another,” he said, according to an official transcript.

“For the reform to be successful, I would like to urge all to avoid instigation and behaviour that incite hatred among our fellow citizens,” he said.

Radical monks have been accused of stoking religious tensions with fiery warnings that Buddhism in Myanmar is under threat from Islam.