Htoo Maung sits down to lunch, sharing a bowl of traditional noodle soup with old friends, an ordinary act that has become extraordinary in Myanmar’s Rakhine state — because he is Muslim, and they are Buddhist. In 2012 inter-communal unrest swept through swathes of western Myanmar, including Htoo Maung’s home town, after allegations spread that a Buddhist woman had been raped by Muslim men. More than 200 died, tens of thousands were displaced and the stage was set for the bloody purge of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine five years later.
