Three men brandishing machetes and knives ignored pleas for mercy and lunged at Ms. Aye Kyi. Her daughter and her granddaughter fled. Several hours later, Ms. Aye Kyi's body was discovered, slumped next to the smoking cinders of her wooden house. The police say she was stabbed six times. She was 94 years old.
Ms. Aye Kyi was one of five Muslims killed in the attack on Thabyu Chaing last month, a rampage that also destroyed more than a dozen homes. So far, in a year and a half of sporadic Buddhist-Muslim violence, more than 200 people, mostly Muslims, have died.
But the killing of a helpless elderly woman — and what followed — is one of the starkest symbols of the breadth of anti-Muslim feelings in this Buddhist-majority country, the lack of sympathy for the victims and the failure of security forces to stop the killings.
The state-run news media obliquely reported the killings as "casualties" without offering any details. And although the president of the fledgling democracy ordered his office to directly investigate the deaths, there has been no national outcry.
"For a culture that has such great respect for the elderly, the killing of this old lady should have been a turning point, a moment of national soul searching," said Richard Horsey, a former United Nations official in the country. "The fact that this has not happened is almost as disturbing as the killing itself."
The violence that swept through this village took with it the final vestiges of what had until very recently been a peaceful place, where Muslims and Buddhists had coexisted amicably for generations before the loosening of the hard hand of the old junta freed some of Myanmar's demons. The match that lit the violence here in Thabyu Chaing, in the western state of Rakhine, as elsewhere, appeared to be the teachings of a radical Buddhist group, 969, that the government continues to allow to preach hatred and extend its influence throughout the countryside.
Hatred for Muslims — partly because of colonial-era grievances — and the fear of appearing sympathetic to them run so deep in Myanmar that officials seem afraid even to console the victims' families.
When the local police chief, U Tin Maung Lwin, inspected the body of Ms. Aye Kyi, her daughter and granddaughter remember his saying, "How cruel." But in a telephone interview, Mr. Tin Maung Lwin, who, like the vast majority of government employees, is Buddhist, denied using "cruel" to describe the murder.
"I did not use words that favor one side or the other," he said.
After five decades of military rule, Myanmar remains a heavily militarized country, where the army alone numbers around half a million men and where plainclothes intelligence officers are ubiquitous. Yet security forces were unwilling or unable to stop the Buddhist mob here.
Muslim villagers say the authorities were well aware of the danger because they received a telephone call from the local police station on Sept. 30, the day before the violence, warning them of looming danger and instructing them to erect a gate at the entrance to the village.
In the early hours of Oct. 1, when villagers received reports that a mob of several dozen men was approaching, they made urgent phone calls to the police and military units a few miles away.
U Myint Aung, a Muslim farmer, says the security forces responded with skepticism. "They asked us, 'Are you sure? Are you sure?' " he said.
"We told them, 'Yes, we are sure. Come quickly!' "
A single police vehicle arrived and dispersed a first wave of attackers before dawn. But the mob that killed Ms. Aye Kyi returned midmorning, and the police fled after firing into the air, villagers say.
Lt. Col. Kyaw Tint, a senior police officer in Rakhine State, said "security forces did their best."
Wai Moe contributed reporting from Yangon, Myanmar.
Source: http://www.news.myanmaronlinecentre.com/2013/11/10/elderly-womans-killing-lays-bare-myanmars-religious-divisions/
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