Burma mobs 'kill 30 Rohingyas'
Source: BBC
More than 30 Rohingya Muslims were killed in attacks by Buddhists last week in Burma's Rakhine state, the BBC has been told.
Two international aid officials who were granted access to the area in the far west of the country said they had found evidence of a mass killing.
...
It is thought tensions initially arose amid reports that several Rohingyas had been killed trying to flee over the border into Bangladesh.
Things escalated after a local policeman was reported missing, presumed killed.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25866350
Some reports say as many as 70 may have been killed.
Berlum
(7,044 posts)"Can't we all just get along" - BuddhaMohammedChristGitcheeManitouQuanYin
happyslug
(14,779 posts)Burma is overwhelming Buddhist but is ruled by a tight group of Military Generals. These Moslems live on the coast, and most of the coastal areas became Moslem for ease of trade with the Mungal Empire of Indian from the 1400s to almost 1800.
The people inland never liked the people on the coast, for the people on the coast controlled most trade. That the two are of two different religion is a minor issue in the conflict, the major difference is how much support does the local provide the Military dictatorship, and the Moslems, because they have trade relations elsewhere, no NOT support the dictatorship as much as people living inland.
You have a similar situation in the southern part of Thailand. The southern part is overwhelmingly Moslem for being coastal people they traded with India and thus embraced Islam as part of they trade with India (A similar situation occurred in the East Indies, but they the Chinese who did most of the trading before 1500 and the movement of the Portuguese into the East Indies and when the Portuguese moved in, do to having extensive trade relations with each other, and hostile to the Moslem who had moved in from India, embraced Catholicism. Thus you have a lot of Chinese Catholics in Indonesia, mostly on former Portuguese Islands like Java and East Timor. The Dutch also were a factor, bring with them the Reform Protestant Church, but since it was post Portuguese a lesser factor in the area.
When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1977, it was a Moslem Nation invading a Catholic Nation, but no one called it a religious war. The same when East Timor fought for its Independence, one side was Catholic, the other side Moslem but religion was NOT a factor except as part of national identity. The same with this fight in Burma, the religion is more how the sides identify themselves, not what they are fighting for.
Another example in the War in Northern Ireland. It was more a class war then a religious war, with the working class being called "Catholics" and the upper Middle Class being idenfity with the Reform Church of Northern Ireland. Again, no one was fighting OVER religion, but that is how both sides identified each other (Thus the old joke about the Jewish owners of a shop, find themselves in the hands of Irish Terrorists and when asked if they they Catholics or Protestant, said they were Jews, and the Terrorists responded "Catholic Jews or Protestant Jews"? One of the leaders of the "Catholic" side in the political side of that war was a member in good standing in the Protestant Church of Ireland. Another example of religion being used to identify a people, even when religion is NOT a factor in the conflict involving those people.