Buddhist customers in the Burmese city of Meikhtila
triggered several days of riots late last month. By the end of
it about 40 people were killed and thousands displaced, with 828
buildings, mostly residential, being destroyed. Human Rights Watch
has provided before-and-after satellite imagery to
illustrate the damage (seen right).
Barack Obama became the first president to
visit Burma, shortly after his re-election last year, and the
administration hoped the continuation of a Bush-era policy of
engagement might incentivize the regime to dial back its own human
rights violations. In this latest round of sectarian violence, the
Burmese president declared a
state of emergency and
condemned extremism, even saying he doesn’t “endorse the use of
force to solve problems” (presumably except when his government
does it, brutally).
