YANGON — Three people including a gold shop owner have been jailed for 14 years in connection with religious riots in Myanmar last month, state media and police said Friday. The three Muslims — who also include the owner's wife and an employee — were accused of beating a Buddhist customer in an argument over a gold hairpin in the town of Meiktila in central Myanmar on March 20. They were convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and theft with intent to cause death or injury, according to the state-run Mirror newspaper. The argument triggered a wave of anti-Muslim violence across the city that left whole Muslim neighborhoods in flames and charred bodies in the streets. The government declared a state of emergency and deployed the army to restore order. Sectarian violence spread to several towns afterward, but has since subsided. No Buddhists have been convicted so far. A judicial official in Meikhtila said the next trial over the violence, due to start April 22, would decide the fate of seven people allegedly involved in the killing of a Buddhist monk on March 20. If found guilty, the seven could face the death penalty. Containing the violence has posed a serious challenge to President Thein Sein's reformist government as it attempts to institute political and economic liberalization after nearly half a century of military rule. The tough sentences are believed to be the first handed down in relation to last month's unrest. Radical monks — once at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement and viewed with reverence in the Buddhist-majority nation — have been linked to the subsequent unrest, which observers said appeared to be well organized. Asylum seekers detained Meanwhile, Indonesia's navy detained 82 asylum seekers including scores of Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar when their boat ran aground as they headed to Australia, an immigration official said Friday. The 51 Rohingya, 24 Iranians and seven Somalis had been heading from Sulawesi island, in the east of the country, to East Nusa Tenggara, one of the closest Indonesian provinces to Australia, he said. An increasing number of Rohingya, described by the UN as one of the world's most persecuted minorities, have been arriving in Indonesia as they flee Buddhist-Muslim violence which erupted in their home state of Rakhine last year. “They were heading to Australia, as usual,” immigration official Muhammad Bakri said. The boat left from southwest Sulawesi but their boat ran aground nearby and they were picked up by a naval patrol, he said. The migrants, including several children, were taken to the nearby city of Makassar where they were being registered and questioned by immigration officials. — Agencies
