Two Buddhists have been arrested after Muslim shops were destroyed in northern Kachin State, police said on Saturday, in a new outbreak of religious violence.
Myanmar is in the grip of acute religious tension after a deadly wave of unrest in March that saw monks and Buddhist mobs attack Muslim areas in violence that has edged towards the country’s main city Yangon.
But it is the first time similar violence has been reported in the majority- Christian Kachin State, which is also home to a patchwork of ethnic and religious groups who have found work in the jade and timber industries.
“We arrested two people at the scene... and are still interrogating them. We will charge them if there is enough evidence,” a police official in Kachin State said, speaking anonymously, following Thursday night’s violence.
Bordering China the remote resource-rich region is currently locked in a bitter conflict between ethnic Kachin rebels and Myanmar’s army.
“About 30 people arrived in the evening and threw with stones at our shops and houses,” according to Moe Moe Lwin, 46, a Muslim woman from a village in Kachin’s Hpakant township.
“We couldn’t do anything except watch while they destroyed our shop... we will leave for a while. We have no idea how we should move forward,” she said, adding she believed outsiders were responsible for the attack.
