In the Irrawaddy Delta region of Myanmar, various Buddhist organizations such as 969, Ma Ba Tha, and others have purchased the license to slaughter cattle in the Delta, not to slaughter, but as a strategy to prevent their slaughter by Muslims. The Muslims continued their slaughter without permit and paid bribes to the municipal authorities to overlook their practice. Two members of 969 organization then proceeded to vigilante investigate the illegal operations. They visited a Muslim-owned cow slaughterhouse. Both monks were beaten up by the Muslims and hospitalized. The beating up of the monks became a social media topic and the news spread across the region. Rumors also spread that Muslims were going house-to-house killing people with knives. Leading 969 Buddhist monks from elsewhere gathered in the region, and the situation became tense. The situation normalized when Islamic leaders represented that they were unaware of the permit rules and agreed that Muslims would stop the cow slaughter.Matthew J Walton, Matt Schissler & Phyu Phyu Thi (2017), Failed riots: Successful conflict prevention in four Myanmar cities, Myanmar Media and Society (M.MAS) project Paper 2.1, Programme on Modern Burmese Studies at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, pages 11-12 The Ma Ba Tha has collected donations from Myanmar's majority Buddhist population to buy cattle slaughter licenses and farmers who wish to sell their cows, and donated these cows to impoverished Buddhists in the north state affected by Buddhist-Muslim violence. The 969 vigilante Buddhists have conducted night raids into Muslim owned business to check compliance of cow slaughter restrictions in Myanmar.SPECIAL REPORT - With official help, Myanmar’s radical Buddhists target Muslim-owned businesses, Myanmar Now 17 September 2015
