Myanmar's Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim 'Other' (Asian Arguments)

by Francis Wade

U Win Htein had also grown suspicious of the reasons for police inaction. The officers deployed to Mingalar Zayone that morning appeared to have allowed armed men to pass between them and pick out Muslims hiding in the house, before taking them outside and beating them to death. There may have been a number of motives, he thought. One is that the police were ordered not to do anything. The second is that they were not given any specific instructions. I don’t know which. Why might the first possibility have happened? Because the government wanted the problem to get bigger and bigger. The MPs, especially me, represent the people from Meikhtila, and they want those people to think that I didn’t do enough to solve the problem. They want to blame me.