This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Three days of anti-Muslim rioting struck Meiktila, a town in central Burma's Mandalay Region, from March 20 to 22, 2013. A dispute at a Muslim-owned gold shop escalated after a Buddhist monk was killed by a mob of Muslim youths, and Buddhist mobs then attacked Muslim neighborhoods, mosques and a madrassa across the town over the following days, most horrifically at the Mingalar Zayyone Islamic boarding school, where students and teachers were killed. The victims across the three days were drawn from a town with no significant Rohingya population, a distinction worth naming since Meiktila's violence is often folded into wider reporting on the Rohingya crisis that in fact concerns a different region of the country entirely.
Much of Meiktila's Muslim quarter was burned, and the town's Muslim population was displaced into camps for months afterward. The Burmese government declared a state of emergency in the town, but Human Rights Watch found little accountability followed. Meiktila was the first and deadliest of a wave of similar riots that spread to other Burmese towns, including Okkan, Lashio, Kanbalu and Thandwe, later the same year, establishing a pattern the country would see repeat rather than an isolated local eruption.