Chapter 5. 2013 Anti-Muslim Violence and the Expansion of 969
During 2013, attacks against Muslim communities spread across central Myanmar, the Yangon hinterland, Shan State, Sagaing Region and southern Arakan. The violence reached communities with different ethnic backgrounds and legal circumstances. Meiktila’s Muslim residents and the Kaman communities attacked around Thandwe were not interchangeable with the Rohingya. From a Rohingya perspective, however, the widening geography of persecution demonstrated that hostility towards Muslims could threaten communities far beyond northern Arakan. Human Rights Watch described the year’s violence as a series of apparently coordinated attacks on Muslim communities and their property.
Meiktila, March 2013: A Local Dispute Becomes Collective Violence
The violence in Meiktila began on 20 March 2013 following an altercation at a Muslim-owned gold shop. Later that day, Muslim assailants attacked and killed a Buddhist monk, sharply escalating the crisis. These incidents required investigation and individual accountability. Instead, Buddhist mobs attacked Muslim residents and neighbourhoods whose inhabitants had no connection to either incident. Reuters’ reconstruction distinguished the initial dispute from the subsequent pursuit and killing of civilians.The escalation exposed a central feature of the attacks: responsibility was transferred from particular individuals to an entire religious community. Children, teachers and families became targets because they were Muslim. Describing their deaths simply as the continuation of a quarrel obscures the decisions made by attackers who moved against people uninvolved in that quarrel.
The Mingalar Zayyone School Massacre
The most closely investigated atrocity occurred in Meiktila’s Mingalar Zayyone quarter on 21 March. Physicians for Human Rights conducted 33 interviews for its investigation, including accounts from surviving students and teachers. Its findings documented the deaths of at least twenty children and four teachers in the attacks. These were victims from a school community, not participants in the gold-shop dispute or the killing of the monk.
Survivors described hiding overnight before seeking refuge in a residential compound. According to testimony collected by PHR, police subsequently instructed the group to put down objects they had gathered for protection and leave under an assurance of safety. As students, teachers and residents were marched out, armed attackers struck them. Witnesses reported that police failed to stop the assaults and continued moving the group through the danger. PHR concluded that its corroborated evidence indicated police complicity in crimes against civilians.
The significance of this evidence extends beyond a failure to disperse a crowd. The survivors’ accounts describe people surrendering their means of protection because they believed the authorities would protect them. Their exposure to attack after that assurance makes the conduct of the officers present a central part of the massacre’s history.
Destruction Recorded from Above
Satellite imagery provided an independent record of the scale of destruction in Meiktila. In its assessment published on 1 April 2013, Human Rights Watch identified approximately 828 completely destroyed buildings and at least 35 partially destroyed buildings. Most were residences. Areas of almost complete destruction were concentrated in three locations covering more than twenty-four hectares.
These figures describe what that particular satellite assessment identified; they should not be confused with later estimates covering different buildings or assessment areas. Their historical importance is the physical evidence of entire residential areas being devastated. The imagery establishes the extent and distribution of destruction, while eyewitness investigations supply evidence about who attacked, who was targeted and how the authorities responded.
Late March: Attacks Spread into Bago Region
The violence continued beyond Meiktila. Reuters documented attacks in Minhla and Gyobingauk in Bago Region. In Minhla, police reported the destruction of three mosques and seventeen Muslim homes and businesses. Witnesses described attackers carrying metal pipes and hammers. In Gyobingauk, Reuters recorded the destruction of a mosque and twenty-three houses, with witnesses describing organized attackers and the use of a bulldozer.
These incidents added a new dimension to the March violence. Separate Muslim settlements were attacked outside the town where the original dispute had occurred. The movement of destruction from one locality to another cannot be explained by assigning collective responsibility for an incident in Meiktila. It shows how Muslim identity itself became sufficient grounds for targeting communities elsewhere.
Okkan, April 2013: Established Families Targeted
On 30 April, anti-Muslim violence erupted in Okkan and surrounding villages north of Yangon. Contemporary accounts linked its immediate beginning to an encounter between a Muslim woman and a Buddhist novice monk. PHR’s subsequent review described armed groups moving into Muslim villages and destroying homes and mosques. The attacks therefore extended well beyond the individuals involved in the reported encounter.
Reporting by The Irrawaddy preserved the experience of Tin Maung Than, a Muslim shopkeeper whose family had lived in Okkan for more than fifty years. His wife, San Htay, was Buddhist. She pleaded with attackers to spare their shop, but it was ransacked. Tin Maung Than recognized some attackers as local residents and said others came from elsewhere. His family’s long residence and relationships within the town offered no reliable protection.
This account is particularly important because it challenges the portrayal of the violence as a confrontation between two uniformly separated religious populations. The targeted household itself crossed religious boundaries. Its experience reveals the vulnerability of families labelled Muslim even when their lives were deeply connected to Buddhist relatives and neighbours.
Lashio, May 2013: Violence Reaches Shan State
Attacks erupted in Lashio on 28–29 May. Contemporary reporting described a Muslim man’s alleged assault on a Buddhist woman, followed by his detention. The response expanded into attacks on Muslim buildings and residents. Reuters reported on 29 May that mobs continued burning Muslim homes despite government assurances that soldiers had restored calm.
By 30 May, approximately 1,200 Muslims had been taken to Mansu Monastery for shelter. Reuters’ reporting recorded destruction affecting a mosque, homes, an orphanage, a cinema and shops. Troops and police were deployed, and roadblocks established. The monastery’s role in sheltering Muslim families also records a protective response by Buddhists during the violence.
The Rohingya-supporting organization Restless Beings published an account and photographs of the destruction as the crisis unfolded. Its report emphasized the fear spreading among Muslim communities as attacks reached further towns. This contemporary advocacy record shows how the Lashio violence was understood by people already documenting Rohingya persecution: as part of a widening danger to Muslim civilians across Myanmar.
Kanbalu, August 2013: Another Community Displaced
On the weekend beginning 24 August, violence struck Htan Gone village in Kanbalu Township, Sagaing Region. Reports attributed the immediate mobilization to an allegation that a Muslim man had attempted to sexually assault a Buddhist woman. An allegation against an individual was again followed by attacks on a wider Muslim community.
ABC’s contemporary account reported that forty-two homes and fifteen shops were burned over two days, leaving hundreds of Muslims homeless. Displaced residents sheltered in a school while arrangements were made for further accommodation. The attack demonstrated that the absence of violence in a locality earlier in the year did not guarantee safety: another established community could rapidly become a site of destruction and displacement.
Thandwe, September–October: Attacks on Kaman Muslims
In late September and early October, violence targeted Muslim villages around Thandwe, also known as Sandoway, in southern Arakan. The principal victims were Kaman Muslims. Preserving their identity is essential: the attacks demonstrated that recognized ethnic status did not reliably protect a Muslim community from persecution. The United States’ religious-freedom report identified the violence as largely targeting the Kaman population.
Reuters interviewed survivors and relatives of victims. Among those killed was Khin Naing, whose teenage son, Tun Tun Naing, described emerging from hiding to identify his father. Witnesses reported repeated attacks by groups carrying sticks, slingshots and machetes. The reporting gave names and family histories to victims otherwise reduced to an aggregate death toll.
Thandwe also provided contemporary evidence linking participants to nationalist organizations. Reuters reported that police had arrested six people, including the local chairman of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party and supporters of 969. Arrests alone do not establish criminal guilt, but they are relevant evidence of the affiliations authorities were investigating in connection with the attacks.
What the Evidence Establishes About 969’s Expansion
The year’s attacks occurred amid the widening influence of 969, but the connection must be established through evidence from particular places. PHR’s August investigation recorded that monks associated with the movement had spoken in several localities before anti-Muslim violence erupted. Its findings also documented patterns of attacks and failures of protection. Together, these observations support examining incitement, local mobilization and the conduct of security forces as connected elements of the violence.
The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission later recorded that members of 969 instigated and led the 2013 attacks on Thandwe’s Kaman community, with active or passive support from security forces. That finding provides a more direct attribution than the general observation that violence occurred where the movement was influential.
The evidence therefore shows more than an increase in the movement’s visibility. In documented cases, nationalist mobilization intersected with the targeting of Muslim settlements and the failure—or participation of authorities responsible for civilian protection.
Accountability After the Attacks
Human Rights Watch reported that early legal proceedings were uneven, with more Muslims initially tried and sentenced than Buddhist instigators. It also recorded subsequent convictions of Buddhists for offences including murder and arson. These developments must both remain in the historical record: prosecutions occurred, while serious concerns persisted about unequal treatment and the response to the wider violence.
For survivors, accountability concerned more than punishment for the original incidents invoked by attackers. It required investigation of the killing of students, the burning of neighbourhoods, the organization of mobs and the conduct of officers who failed to protect people in their custody or presence. PHR’s Meiktila investigation specifically called attention to that responsibility.
The distinct significance of 2013 was the extension of attacks across diverse Muslim communities and widely separated regions. For Rohingya, this expansion exposed the danger of treating their persecution as an isolated dispute over belonging in Arakan. The protection of Muslim civilians throughout Myanmar had become a national test and in the communities documented here, that protection repeatedly failed.