Myanmar Ethnic Strife Spills Over to Malaysia

[unhappycamper]

http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/02/myanmar-ethnic-strife-spills-malaysia/



Border guards in Bangladesh refuse entry to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in November 2012.

Myanmar Ethnic Strife Spills Over to Malaysia
By Kalinga Seneviratne

SINGAPORE, Feb 20 2014 (IPS) - Two Myanmar Buddhist politicians who were visiting Malaysia narrowly escaped a late night assassination attempt outside a leading shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur this month. The incident has raised fears of an overseas spillover of the religious violence that has engulfed their state of Rakhine in recent years.

Aye Maung and Aye Thar Aung are leaders of the Arakan National Party (ANP), representing the mostly Buddhist Rakhines, the largest ethnic group in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, which was known as Arakan during British colonial times. Gunmen riding a motorcycle fired a number of shots at a car carrying them and their companions in a busy shopping area of the Malaysian capital, but no one was injured, according to eyewitness reports.

The Buddhist leaders returned to Myanmar a day after the incident. Aye Maung told a news conference that it was a well-planned terrorist attack. “I strongly believe the attack was a planned assassination attempt on our lives,” he claimed. “Our internal disturbances have now reached overseas, and we can now firmly conclude from this incident that the terrorists are now well established in foreign countries, especially in Malaysia.”

Some Muslim groups in Malaysia, however, claim that the ANP has staged the drama in order to gain the sympathy of Buddhists in Myanmar ahead of the general election there in 2015.