Myanmar violence spills into Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR

Ethnic violence in Myanmar between Muslims and Buddhists appears to have spilled over into Malaysia, police said yesterday, with four killings in recent days suspected to be linked to the religious tension. Three Muslim Rohingya women have been also shot dead in a confrontation with security forces in a violence-torn region of western Myanmar.

All the victims, including a man slashed to death by machete-wielding attackers at a car wash in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, this week, were Buddhists from Myanmar, said the city’s deputy police chief Amar Singh Ishar Singh.

“We have a feedback that this may be Myanmar Buddhists and Muslims having a spillover here in Kuala Lumpur,” he told Reuters. “In Myanmar, the Muslims are the victims; over here the Buddhists are the victims.”

Meanwhile, a police officer in Mrauk-U township in western Rakhine state told the Associated Press yesterday that three women died in Parein village, where they were part of a crowd that defied efforts to relocate them from the housing they have been living in since their original homes were burned by Buddhists in a wave of sectarian clashes last year that left hundreds dead.