Before the Taungoo incident, a group called “We Are Not Afraid” and “Heroes” arrived with over 200 members in four large express buses, claiming they were there for exams. At the end of the exams taken by monks in Taungoo, they discreetly distributed leaflets.

These leaflets incited destruction of mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, and homes, urging monks to lead the charge. It framed participation as a national duty, pressuring even the unwilling to keep the plan secret. Eventually, the peaceful and diverse beauty of Taungoo was shattered.

Authorities referred to the monks as “oranges” (a coded term). Despite a curfew, they roamed the city causing destruction. Police radio chatter revealed that about 20 “oranges” had gathered in front of a mosque, armed and ready to set it ablaze. The phrase “train” (code word on walki talkie) echoed ominously, suggesting coordinated action.

Around 4 a.m., police used loudspeakers to urge monks to return to their monasteries and observe religious silence. They warned that if crowds weren’t dispersed within half an hour, force would be used. Meanwhile, monks chanted continuously, filling the surroundings with sound.

Later that morning, village cinemas broadcast announcements calling for Muslims to be purged from the city, encouraging people to reclaim their religion and act independently. By 2 p.m., police loudspeakers reported that over 200 “oranges” had stormed the city, and control was lost. The phrase “Get on the train” resurfaced, and the city descended into chaos.

Respectfully, KTZO (Thane Zaw OO)

Credit to My Wiki article:

In 2001,Myo Pyauk Hmar Soe Kyauk Hla Tai , The Fear of Losing One’s Race, and many other anti-Muslim pamphlets were widely distributed by monks. Distribution of the pamphlets was also facilitated by the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA),^[57] a civilian organisation instituted by the ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Many Muslims feel that this exacerbated the anti-Muslim feelings that had been provoked by the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in the Bamyan Province of Afghanistan.^[56] Human Rights Watch reports that there was mounting tension between the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Taungoo for weeks before it erupted into violence in the middle of May 2001. Buddhist monks demanded that the Hantha Mosque in Taungoo be destroyed in “retaliation” for the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.^[56] Mobs of Buddhists, led by monks, vandalised Muslim-owned businesses and property and attacked and killed Muslims in Muslim communities.^[57] On 15 May 2001, anti-Muslim riots broke out in Taungoo, Bago division, resulting in the deaths of about 200 Muslims, in the destruction of 11 mosques, and setting ablaze of over 400 houses. On this day also, about 20 Muslims praying in the Han Tha mosque were beaten, some to death, by the pro-junta forces. On 17 May 2001, Lt. General Win Myint, Secretary No. 3 of the SPDC and deputy Home and Religious minister arrived and curfew was imposed there in Taungoo. All communication lines were disconnected.^[58] On 18 May, the Han Tha mosque and Taungoo Railway station mosque were razed by bulldozers owned by the SPDC. The mosques in Taungoo remained closed until May 2002, with Muslims forced to worship in their homes. After two days of violence the military stepped in and the violence immediately ended.^[56] There also were reports that local government authorities alerted Muslim elders in advance of the attacks and warned them not to retaliate to avoid escalating the violence. While the details of how the attacks began and who carried them out were unclear by year’s end, the violence significantly heightened tensions between the Buddhist and Muslim communities.^[59]

Masjids damaged by SPDC THUGS in Taungoo (English)

Posted on March 7, 2010 by sanooaung

SPDC Military Generals not only ordered their affiliated THUGS to destroy the Masjids,they refused permission to rebuild or renovate those damaged masjids even after almost a decade.

May be this is also a blessing in disguise, Allah had kept them to use those damaged Masjids, when the time come to PROSECUTE those SPDC Generals, Than Shwe, Mg Aye, Shwe Man, Thein Sein and Khin Nyunt. Unrepaired Masjids whould become a very visible evidences to prosecute all those criminals at ICC for the Crimes against Humanity and GENOCIDE.

Source of Photos: Myanmar Muslim.net

Crackdown on Burmese Muslims
Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper
July 2002  (download PDF version – 12 pages)

Taungoo Violence (May 2001)

There was mounting tension between the Buddhist and Muslim communities in Taungoo for weeks before it erupted into violence in the middle of May 2001. The destruction of the Buddhist images in Bamiyan seem to have been one of the main triggers. Buddhist monks demanded that the ancient Hantha Mosque in Taungoo be destroyed in retaliation for the destruction in Bamiyan, according to Muslim leaders.

Eyewitnesses blame the violence on a crowd of more than a thousand people, led by monks. The violence started when a group of Burmese Buddhists attacked shops and restaurants owned by Muslims in the central town area. The Muslim owners retaliated angrily, defending themselves and fighting back, and then the violence escalated. In the next two days, Muslim homes, shops, and mosques were damaged or burned. Many Muslims were beaten and required medical treatment. During the violence, many Muslims sought and were given sanctuary both in Christian and Buddhist religious places of worship. Medical treatment at the government hospital was denied or delayed for a number of victims, said a local resident, and private doctors provided care for them but at their own risk.

Nine Muslims reportedly died during the riots, including three children. In one incident, a family of four, including two young children, perished when their house was set on fire by angry crowds allegedly whipped up by Buddhist monks. The house was burned to the ground, allegedly after being ignored by fire-fighters who devoted all their efforts to saving a Buddhist home next door.¹¹

More than sixty Muslim homes were destroyed and virtually all the Muslim-owned shops were looted and demolished, according to a local Muslim leader. Six mosques were destroyed, according to Muslim residents, including the famous 200-year-old Hantha Mosque. The mosque was initially defended by volunteer Muslim guards, but the local authorities prevailed on the committee to allow the town council to take responsibility for the mosque’s safety. Muslim leaders emphasize that the Mosque was demolished during curfew hours and believe that local authorities were at least in part responsible for its destruction.

There are also credible reports that the violence against Muslims in Taungoo spread to nearby townships and villages, including Myo Hla and Kywe Pway. In Taungdwin Gyi several days after the violence in Taungoo, Muslim-owned cars, houses, shops, and properties were burned and destroyed, said a Muslim eyewitness. The conflict between Muslims and Buddhists also spread to Taunggyi in Shan state. There are also unconfirmed claims that several mosques in parts of Karen State to the south of Taungoo were destroyed in Buddhist-Muslim violence that followed the disturbances in Taungoo.

There are also reports of problems in Prome and Mandalay around May, but here Buddhist monks seem to have taken an active role in protecting the local mosques from destruction. The tension was so high in Mandalay that authorities were forced to close the Zay Cho market (in central Mandalay near the main railway station) for three days. A curfew was declared as soon as anti-Muslim clashes broke out in Pegu – a little more than eighty kilometers northeast of Rangoon. Curfews were imposed in many areas and towns in the second half of May because of the Muslim-Buddhist tension, according to a Rangoon-based diplomat, including in Pegu, Prome, Taungoo, and Taunggyi.

Many of the monks in Taungoo were carrying hand-phones, according to a highly credible eyewitness. Mobile phones are not readily available to the Burmese population — they simply cannot afford them. This seems to suggest that they were not monks, and may have been military intelligence operatives masquerading as monks. In general, there was clearly a split among the monks in their attitude towards the violence against Muslims.

The scars of last May’s violence remain. Recent visitors to Taungoo say there are empty lots where former homes and businesses once stood. They have all been cleaned up and left empty. The mosques in Taungoo remained closed as of May 2002. Muslims have been forced to worship in their homes. Local Muslim leaders complain that they are still harassed, and told that not more than five people can pray together even in the privacy of their own homes. After the violence, many local Muslims moved away from Taungoo to other nearby towns and as far away as Rangoon. But local residents say that some of them have now returned to Taungoo because they could not find work in Rangoon.

11 The U.S. State Department’s Annual Report for International Religious Freedom issued in October, 2001, estimates that ten Muslims and ten Buddhists were killed, and notes “…there were credible reports that the monks that appeared to be inciting at least some of the violence were USDA or military personnel dressed as monks. After two days of violence the military stepped in and the violence immediately ended.”

” တောင်ငူ အရေးအခင်း 17.5.2001 “

ပဲခူးတိုင်း, တောင်ငူမြို့၌ ဗလီ 13 လုံးရှိ , 17.5.2001 အရေးအခင်းကာလ၌ ဗလီအားလုံး 13 လုံးပိတ်ခံရ ,
ယနေ့ 8.8.2018 နေ့ထိ ပိတ်ခံထားရသော ဗလီ 7 လုံး ကျန်ရှိနေသေး ။
၉၆၉ မဘသ စစ်တပ်နှင့် ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာ အစွန်းရောက်မိစ္ဆာများ၏ ရက်ရက်စက်စက် မီးရိူ့သတ်ဖြတ်ခံရမူ့ကြောင့် အပြစ်မဲ့ မွတ်စလင်မ် 8 ဦးသေဆုံး, မွတ်စလင်မ် 50 ဦး အဓမ္မအဖမ်းခံခဲ့ရ ။

ထောင်ထဲမှာ မွတ်စလင်မ် 2 ဦး ညှင်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခံရပြီးကွယ်လွန်သေဆုံး ,
စုစုပေါင်း မွတ်စလင်မ် 10 ဦး အသတ်ခံရပြီး ရှဟိ့ဒ်ဖြစ် ကွယ်လွန်သေဆုံး ။
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Photo ပုံတွင်ပါရှိသော ချိတ်ပိတ်ခံထားရသော ဗလီကြီးမှာ မကျည်းချိူ ဗလီ နှင့် ဗလီလေးမှာ ရှီအာဗလီတို့ ဖြစ်ပါသည်။

ဖွင့်လှစ်ရန် ကျန်ရှိနေသေးသော ချိတ်ပိတ်ခံထားရသော ဗလီ 7 လုံးမှာ 17.5.2001 နေ့မှ ယနေ့ 8.8.2018 နေ့ထိ နှစ်ပေါင်း 17 နှစ် အချိန်ကာလတာရှိခဲ့ပြီ ။ ရာဇဝင် ရိုင်းလိုက်လေခြင်း။

အာဏာရ NLD ဒေါ်စုကြည်အစိုးရအဖွဲ့အနေဖြင့် မြန်မာတစ်နိုင်ငံလုံးမှာရှိတဲ့ ပိတ်သိမ်းထားသော ဗလီဝတ်ကျောင်းတော်များကို အမြန်ဆုံးပြန်ဖွင့်ပေးရန် တာဝန်ရှိပါသည်။ အမြန်ဆုံး ပြန်ဖွင့်ပေးရန် လေးနက်စွာ တောင်းဆိုလိုက်သည်။