Myanmars Enemy Within

Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim 'Other'

For decades Myanmar has been portrayed as a case of good citizen versus bad regime - men in jackboots maintaining a suffocating rule over a majority Buddhist population beholden to the ideals of non-violence and tolerance. But in recent years this narrative has been upended. In June 2012, violence between Buddhists and Muslims in western Myanmar pointed to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world.

Attacks on Muslims then spread across the country, leaving hundreds dead, entire neighbourhoods turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of Muslims confined to internment camps. The violence, spurred on by monks, pro-democracy activists and politicians-and erupting amid the passage to democracy-has illuminated a hard truth: that in diverse societies undergoing the pains of transition, communities once united in their opposition to ruling powers can turn on one another in the cruellest of ways. In this gripping and deeply reported account, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar's case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.