Ethnic issues in Myanmar are beginning to emerge, which is what happened years before, that sparked a civil war. These issues are centered on ethnic and religious problems. The most recent case is between the Muslims and the Buddhists of Myanmar. In the city of Meiktila, groups of Buddhists went on a rampage, killing at least 32 people, destroying property, and wreaking havoc. This violence could possibly spread. A few miles away from Meiktila, houses were burnt down in a dominant Muslim neighborhood. Another instance that this violence is spreading is attacks of arson on a mosque and a school affiliated with a certain religion.
As mentioned before, these problems are not new to Myanmar. Religious conflicts have always been present, especially when Buddhism became the official religion of the country. This resulted in ethnic, minority religions being Muslim, Christian, and a few others. Peace was promised and talked about when the new president came to power in Myanmar, but this was only false hope. Everything talked about concerning creating peace among ethnic groups has yet to amount to anything. And, according to leaders of ethnic groups, there is an extreme need for peace. The unrest between groups and their hope in peace has been the worst ever seen. A main reason for no hope is the way the military has been acting. They have been going on campaigns in Myanmar, killing many people of different ethnic groups. So, the government is trying to stop this murder through force, but what the people want to see is the government stop it through peace.
This came as quite a surprise to me. I had no idea that there was still so much unrest in Myanmar. Unfortunately, some of this unrest seems as if it could be solved quite easily. I think that if the government would realize that trying to stop the military's violence peacefully would result in some peace in the ethnic groups, then many of these problems could be solved easily. In order to run a country well, you need to know what the people want and be able to respond to those needs. You need to keep the citizens happy, which is not what Myanmar is doing. Keeping at least a small amount of the population happy is always an improvement. Giving promises to people and then not following up on them is very annoying, and will most definitely not win the people's trust. It seems as if Myanmar is creating more and more problems that they need to deal with, because of their own negligence and lack of ability to realize that all of these problems could be solve very easily with peace talks and peaceful actions.
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