Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

Firemen attempt to extinguish fires during riots in Meikhtila, Myanmar, on March 22, 2013. Unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in central Myanmar has reduced neighborhoods to ashes and stoked fears that last year's sectarian bloodshed is spreading into the country's heartland in a test of Asia's newest democracy.

Nyein Chan Naing / EPA

A riot policeman stands guard next to a burning building in Meikhtila on March 22, 2013. A curfew was imposed for the second night as riots between Buddhists and Muslims continued.

By The Associated Press

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar — Myanmar President Thein Sein has declared a state of emergency in a central town where at least 20 people have been killed in violence between Buddhists and Muslims.

Burning fires from two days of Buddhist-Muslim violence smoldered across Meikhtila on Friday as residents cowered indoors amid growing fears the country's latest bout of sectarian bloodshed could spread.

The government's struggle to contain the unrest is proving another major challenge to Thein Sein's reformist administration as it attempts to chart a path to democracy after nearly half a century of military rule that once crushed all dissent. Read the full story.

Nyein Chan Naing / EPA

People carry their belongings as they arrive at a temporary rescue center in Meikhtila on March 22, 2013.

Soe Than Win / AFP - Getty Images

Residents sit on a railway track watching buildings burn around a mosque in riot-hit Meikhtila on March 21, 2013.

Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

Burnt houses are seen in Meikhtila on March 21, 2013.

China Daily / Reuters

Drug lord Naw Kham is taken from a Chinese jail to be executed on Friday.

BEIJING – A notorious gang leader and drug lord from Myanmar was among four foreigners executed in China Friday, marking the first time Beijing has extradited, tried and put to death foreign nationals. 

Naw Kham and three accomplices from Thailand and Laos were given a lethal injection in Yunnan’s provincial capital, Kunming, late Friday afternoon.

The four were found guilty last year and sentenced Wednesday for the October 2011 hijacking of two cargo ships and the murder of 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River.

But Beijing’s decision to live broadcast the final moments of the men as they waited in their cells followed by their walk to waiting police cars to the execution facility has drawn criticism across China’s websphere.

The four were additionally found guilty of smuggling drugs, kidnapping and hijacking cargo ships in the “Golden Triangle,” a section of territory that overlaps parts of Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos that accounts for much of Asia’s opium and methamphetamines production.

Beijing contends that, while Naw Kham masterminded the hijacking of the two Chinese cargo ships, he also colluded with Thai soldiers who may have been responsible for the slaying of the sailors. 

Thai authorities are investigating nine of their soldiers alleged to be involved in the incident.

The capture of Naw Kham – who was at the center of the region's bustling drug trade – was a coup for Chinese police and anti-drug ministries, which reportedly spent a year tracking the infamous smuggler.

The search was unprecedented as it marked the first time that Chinese forces were seen actively searching for foreign national criminal suspects outside of China’s borders.

Task force
The importance Beijing placed on the search was underscored by a report last month by Chinese state media that revealed a task force set up to capture Naw Kham had at one point considered a controversial plan to use an unmanned drone to bomb a suspected hideout of Naw Kham’s gang in northeastern Myanmar.   

The scheme was scrapped after the order to capture Naw Kham alive and bring him to trial was reiterated from senior leaders.

Naw Kham’s capture and subsequent trial was given significant coverage in Chinese state media. In the run up to Friday’s execution, long reports detailing the gang’s crimes, celebrating the diligent work of China’s security forces and explaining the method of execution were repeatedly played on Chinese broadcaster CCTV.

CCTV also ran two hours of live coverage leading up to the executions, showing the men’s final moments as they were led from their prison cells to execution facility. Despite rampant rumors and speculation that the state broadcaster was planning on showing the execution live, it ended its live coverage after the men were driven away.  

The magnitude of Naw Kham’s capture and execution was never underplayed, with one CCTV reporter noting that officials there were comparing Naw Kham’s case to the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

The comparison carries an undeniable message from the country’s ruling Communist Party to its people: China can and will look out for its nationals both at home and abroad.

But many in China found the live broadcast of the men’s final moments in poor taste and an uncomfortable reminder of show executions from China’s turbulent period during the Cultural Revolution.

“Even though they are deserved to die, these criminals have dignity too,” wrote one user on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, “The Cultural Revolution is back.”

“China is a country without humanity,” lamented another.

“CCTV is as cruel as these criminals,” one user bluntly noted. 

Mo Shaoping, a prominent criminal lawyer and advisor at the Central University of Finance and Economics Law School, argued that Beijing’s decision to broadcast the prisoners’ final moments was less about striking a nationalist chord and more about showing how the country has improved its handling of the death penalty – a sensitive topic for China’s leadership.

“China has made progress in how it deals with the death penalty,” Mo said. “showing everything live helps people see that prisoners are being treated humanely in their final moments.”

Indeed, much of the commentary on CCTV as cameras rolled on Naw Kham in his cell discussed how he had been given a full doctor’s inspection and that officers in the room had made small chat and offered cigarettes to the kingpin to help him relax.

They also noted that Naw had actually gained weight and looked healthier after months under Chinese supervision.

Mo also noted that the use of lethal injection mean that potential donor organs could not be harvested from the men, addressing another common criticism of China’s previous handling of state executions.

NBC News Le Li contributed to this report.

Stringer / Reuters

Soldiers stand at the crash site of a Air Bagan plane in Myanmar, Tuesday.

YANGON, Myanmar – A passenger jet missed an airport runway in heavy fog and landed in a rice paddy, killing two people on the ground and injuring 10, state television in Myanmar said Tuesday.

The pilot of the Air Bagan plane touched down beyond Heho airport in Shan state, killing an 11-year-old passenger and a motorcyclist on the ground, MRTV said.

Four foreigners and the pilot were among the injured. The plane was carrying 63 passengers, 51 of whom were foreigners. MRTV said.

Air Bagan is one of five airlines operating domestic routes in Myanmar.

Stringer / Reuters

People gather at the crash site of a Air Bagan plane in Myanmar, Tuesday.

Owned by Tay Za, a local tycoon blacklisted by the United States for his alleged links to former military regime, Air Bagan was the country's first privately run carrier when it was established in 2004.

Agence France Press (AFP) reported that the aircraft - one of two Fokker-100s in the Air Bagan fleet - was forced to make an emergency landing two miles from Heho airport, which is the gateway to the popular tourist destination of Inle Lake.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Nicolas Asfouri / AFP - Getty Images

Supporters of President Barack Obama and Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi line the road outside Yangon University and wave after a convoy carrying Obama and Suu Kyi pass on Monday.

YANGON, Myanmar --  Allison Morris stood in front of a crowded conference room in a downtown Yangon hotel and introduced a pair of would-be entrepreneurs called Team Optimist on Sunday, the eve of President Barack Obama's visit to Myanmar.

The team -- which lived up to their name -- then explained how they wanted to set up a sort of employment agency to bring back to Myanmar the skilled people who have fled or been forced abroad over the last five decades of military rule and economic stagnation.

Another couple then made a pitch for a recycling business, followed by a commercial college to teach traditional dance.

'New chapter': Obama makes history in Myanmar

"There's so much enthusiasm here," Morris told NBC News. She's an American, raised mostly in Asia, who moved here in August to set up Project Hub Yangon, designed to identify, encourage and launch young entrepreneurs, and the pitches were part of a contest she'd organized.

Her venture is based on a business model that grew out of the United States, mostly in Silicon Valley.

"Where else," she asked, "would they sell copies of the new foreign investment laws at traffic junctions -- alongside newspapers and soft drinks?"

She was referring to the new rules governing business investment here, which rather than gathering dust in a government office have been so eagerly sought after that they're being stocked and sold by the Yangon's street hawkers.

Indeed, after years of isolation, change has come to Myanmar. Obama, an embodiment of that change, on Monday became the first U.S. president to visit the country.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Obama speaks at Yangon University on Monday.

He was greeted by enthusiastic crowds in the former capital Yangon, and met President Thein Sein, a former junta member who has spearheaded reforms since taking office in March 2011, and opposition leader and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Another one of those in the audience of Morris’ event was Naureen Nayyar, a Burmese-American blogger who covers the tech scene. "I can't believe they're pitching real ideas," she said. "In Silicon Valley, it’s all apps."

In the gloom of dusk, at a nearby traffic circle workmen raised the U.S. and Myanmar flags alternately on flagpoles. From a distance it looked like that historic photograph, "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima." In its own way this too was historic, something that simply couldn't have been imagined just two years back.

PhotoBlog: In reforming Myanmar, junta mouthpiece gets makeover

Also almost unbelievable was the scene a little further down the road -- a fashion show, complete with thumping music and flashing lights. It was grandly titled "The Myanmar Internal Fashion Week" and claimed to be the first and biggest show of its kind in the country.

It took place outside a shiny new shopping mall.

The show was packed. Crowds of people -- curious, bewildered even -- carried children on their shoulders, and strained for a glimpse of a show that ranged from scantily-clad young women in tight shorts to lavish wedding dresses.  

PhotoBlog: Models prepare for a fashion show in Myanmar

Myanmar is changing fast, from the crowded roads to the buzz of new business activity. 

Critics of the Obama’s visit say it is premature when so much remains to be done.

But if you look at where it stood just two years ago, the change after decades of isolation is still astounding --  from the release of political prisoners (with more just ahead of Obama's visit) to greater press freedom. And of course the release of Aung San Suu Kyi along with her election as a member of parliament and partner in the reform process.

Suu Kyi's journey to global icon: A heartbreaking tale of personal sacrifice

It was appropriate that Obama chose Yangon University for a speech Tuesday. You could smell the fresh paint and lacquer after the authorities gave the dilapidated main hall a face lift for the occasion.

The university, long a center of protest and consequent repression, has seen it all -- hope, despair, and neglect. It played a key role in the independence movement and uprising against the generals, for which the students paid dearly.

More recently what was once one of the most famous and best regarded educational institutions in Asia was virtually closed by the military. Now there are hopes that it can restore its former glory. 

America's 'Pacific president'? Obama opens first post-election trip with visit to Thailand

Myanmar's renaissance will depend on rebuilding a shattered education system.

At the entrance of the university, where the military once hoisted Orwellian slogans, there are huge billboards advertising shoes, perfume and a line of fashion called Step. "Step into the future," reads the slogan.

PhotoBlog: Obama's trip to Myanmar

Nearby, a group of policemen and security officials stood around chatting. One of their cellphones rang. The ringtone was "Gangnam Style," the South Korean pop song that became an international sensation earlier this year.

They didn't dance, but if they had it wouldn't have been surprising -- such is the almost surreal pace of change in Myanmar.

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Updated at 9:50 a.m. ET: BANGKOK - President Barack Obama kicked off a three-country Asian tour with a visit to Thailand on Sunday, using his first post-election trek overseas to try to show he is serious about shifting the U.S. strategic focus eastwards. 

Obama's itinerary will include a landmark visit to once-isolated Myanmar and an East Asia summit in Cambodia as he seeks to re-calibrate U.S. economic and security commitments. This is intended to counter China's influence at a time when America is disentangling itself from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

But his attention will be divided during his travels as he faces a simmering crisis in the Gaza Strip pitting Israel against Hamas militants, plus economic problems at home. 

Netanyahu: Israel prepared for 'significant expansion' of Gaza operation

In Bangkok, a monk in bright orange robes gave Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a private tour of the centuries-old Wat Pho temple, taking them past its massive reclining Buddha. 

Somehow, the fiscal problems back in Washington came up. 

"We're working on this budget. We're going to need a lot of prayer for that," Obama was overheard telling the monk, a light-hearted reference to a fiscal showdown in Washington over tax increases and spending cuts that kick in at the end of the year unless Obama and congressional Republicans can reach a deal. 

Capitol Hill leaders sound optimistic notes after fiscal cliff talks with Obama

Later, at a press joint conference with Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra the president said it was no accident that Thailand was the first  country he decided to visit after his re-election.

"As I've said many times, the U.S. is a Pacific nation. (The) Pacific will sculpt the future of the U.S.," he said. "That's why I've made restoring U.S. engagement a cornerstone -- Thailand is America's oldest friend in Asia ... we've been treaty allies for 60 years."

The U.S. administration regards Thailand as a key ally for advancing an "Asia pivot" that Obama announced last year with an eye to an increasingly assertive China. Obama, who was born in Hawaii and spent part of his youth in Indonesia, has called himself America's first "Pacific president". 

His choice of Southeast Asia for his first foreign trip since winning re-election on November 6 is meant to show he intends to make good on his pledge to boost ties with one of the world's fastest-growing regions, a strategy his aides see as crucial to his presidential legacy. 

It is his second extensive trek through Asia in little more than a year. 

Audience with king
Obama also had a an audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 84, the world's longest-reigning monarch, who has been in hospital recovering from an illness since September 2009. 

The king's softly spoken words made Obama smile at one point. "Elections in the United States are very long but it's very gratifying to know people still have confidence in me," the president responded. 

Royal Palace / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks with Thai King Bhumibol Adulayadej during an audience at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok on Sunday.

"I thought it was very important that my first trip after the elections was to Thailand, which is such a great ally," he added. 

Obama and the king also exchanged gifts, according to journalists traveling with American officials. The president gave the monarch an album with pictures of the king with former U.S. presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and former first lady Nancy Reagan.  

It wasn't immediately known what the king's present to the Obamas was.

Suspicion of US rife as White House contenders batter China

Myanmar visit
In the centerpiece of his three-day tour, Obama will on Monday make the first U.S. presidential visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, another milestone in Washington's rapprochement with the former pariah state, where a fragile transition is under way after decades of military rule. 

The trip "was not an endorsement of the Burmese government," Obama told journalists at the press conference in Thailand. It was instead an "acknowledgement that there is a process underway inside that country that nobody foresaw -- the president is taking steps that move us in a better direction, Sui Kyi is now a member of parliament, prisoners have been released."

Obama will meet President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the struggle against military rule and, like Obama, is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. 

Prisoners freed in Myanmar ahead of Obama visit

The president's aides have said the Myanmar trip was meant to lock in progress so far and that he will speak forcefully on the need to do more on human rights, especially to curb sectarian violence. 

Reuters and NBC News staff contributed to this report.

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Myanmar released prisoners on Thursday in a goodwill gesture ahead of a historic visit to the former military state by U.S. President Barack Obama, but activists and the main opposition party said there seemed to be no political detainees among them.

State media said early in the day that 452 prisoners would be freed with the "intent to help promote goodwill and the bilateral relationship". A Home Ministry official said some "prisoners of conscience" would be among them.

However, the National League for Democracy party of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said that was not the case.

"It's so disappointing that none of those freed today are political prisoners," said senior party official Naing Naing, himself a former detainee.

Myanmar has released about 800 political prisoners as part of a dramatic reform program over the past year and a half but it is believed to be still holding several hundred.

The prisoners released on Thursday included people who had been jailed for deserting the army or committing some other military offence, Naing Naing said. "Maybe these people are political prisoners by their yardstick."

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) had not heard of any political prisoners being among the 144 people it said had been released by mid-afternoon.

Families are often told by the authorities to prepare for the release of prisoners who can be in jails in distant provinces, but AAPP representative Bo Kyi said he was not aware of any being given such notice on this occasion.

Obama will become the first U.S. president to visit Myanmar when he travels there during a November 17-20 tour of Southeast Asia that will also take in Thailand and Cambodia. He is due to meet President Thein Sein on Monday

However, the BBC reported that Obama has been criticized by some who say it is too early to reward Myanmar’s regime.

"The manipulative use of prisoner releases just before key international moments is getting more blatant than ever," said Mark Farmaner of the London-based advocacy group Burma Campaign UK.

Over the past year, Myanmar, also known as Burma, has introduced the most sweeping reforms in the former British colony since a 1962 military coup. A semi-civilian government stacked with former generals has allowed elections, eased rules on protests, relaxed censorship and freed some dissidents.

The United States eased sanctions on Myanmar this year in recognition of the political and economic change, and many U.S. companies are looking at starting operations in the country located between China and India, with its abundant resources and low-cost labor.

Obama has sought to consolidate ties and reinforce U.S. influence across Asia in what officials have described as a policy "pivot" toward the region as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

A girl joins others collecting pieces of metal from the rubble in a neighborhood in Pauktaw township that was burned in recent violence October 27, 2012.

SITTWE, Myanmar - A human rights group expressed concern for the safety of thousands of Muslims on Saturday after revealing satellite images of a once-thriving coastal community reduced to ashes during a week of violence in western Myanmar.

The images released by the New York-based Human Rights Watch show "near total destruction" of a predominantly Rohingya Muslim part of Kyaukpyu, one of several areas in Rakhine state where battles between Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists threaten to derail the former Burma's fragile democratic transition.

More than 811 buildings and houseboats were razed in Kyaukpyu on Oct. 24, forcing many Rohingya to flee north by sea toward the state capital Sittwe, Human Rights Watch said.

"Burma's [Myanmar’s] government urgently needs to provide security for the Rohingya in Arakan (Rakhine) State, who are under vicious attack," Phil Robertson, the group's deputy Asia director, said.

There were widespread unconfirmed reports of boatloads of Rohingyas trying to cross the sea border to neighboring Bangladesh, which has denied them refugee status since 1992.

No food, no water
Rohingyas in dozens of packed boats with no food or water that have fled Kyaukpyu -- an industrial zone important to China -- and other recent hotspots were seeking access on Friday to overcrowded refugee camps around the state capital Sittwe, according to four Rohingya refugee sources.

Some boats were blocked by security forces from reaching the shore and few Rohingyas managed to reach the camps, the sources said by telephone.

Wan-lark foundation, an organization that has been assisting Rakhine Buddhist refugees, said no clashes in the state had been reported to them since Friday night, but dead bodies of Rakhines had been found.

"Around 6pm last night in Kyawtyaw, the bodies of 16 Rakhines were found in the sea. They had died during the attacks on Thursday. We're looking for more bodies," representative Tun Mein Thein said on Saturday.

The chaos suggests the reformist government is struggling to contain historic ethnic and religious tensions suppressed during nearly a half century of military rule that ended last year.

Myanmar government ends direct media censorship

A Rakhine government spokesman put the death toll at 112 as of Friday. But within hours state media revised it to 67 killed from Oct. 21 to 25, with 95 wounded and nearly 3,000 houses destroyed.

The death toll could be far higher, said Human Rights Watch, citing "allegations from witnesses fleeing scenes of carnage and the government's well-documented history of underestimating figures that might lead to criticism of the state."

The clashes come just five months after communal unrest killed more than 80 people and displaced at least 75,000 in the same region.

Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

Hla Hla Myint, who suffered a gunshot wound to the head in recent violence, rests in a bed at a hospital in Kyuktaw township, Myanmar, Thursday.

'Ethnic cleansing'
A boat carrying 120 Muslims from Kyaukpyu was intercepted by Rakhines, who killed the men and raped the women, the advocacy group Burmese Rohingya Organisation U.K. claimed in a statement. This report could not be verified, Reuters said.

"Ethnic cleansing is happening under the noses of the international community and they are doing nothing," said Tun Khin, the group's president. "We have confirmed reports that hundreds of people have been killed and the government must be aware of that."

Ease sanctions on Myanmar, Democracy leader Suu Kyi says on US tour

Kyaukpyu is crucial to China's most strategic investment in Myanmar: Twin pipelines that will carry oil and natural gas through the town on the Bay of Bengal to China's energy-hungry western provinces.

The United Nations has warned that Myanmar's fledgling democracy could be "irreparably damaged" by the violence.

Rohingyas are officially stateless. Buddhist-majority Myanmar's government regards the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas in the country as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and not as one of the country's 135 official ethnic groups, and denies them citizenship.

But many of those expelled from Kyaukpyu are not Rohingya but Muslims from the officially recognized Kaman minority, said Chris Lewa, director of the Rohingya advocacy group, Arakan Project. "It's not just anti-Rohingya violence anymore, it's anti-Muslim," she said.

It was unclear what set off the latest arson and killing that started on Sunday. In June, tension flared after the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman that was blamed on Muslims, but there was no obvious spark this time.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International have called on Myanmar to amend or repeal a 1982 citizenship law to end the Rohingyas' stateless condition.

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Reuters

Employees get freshly printed copies of the New Light of Myanmar at the newspaper's office in Naypyitaw, Sept. 19, 2012. Established in 1993, the state-run New Light of Myanmar is the country's only English-language daily newspaper. It will soon face competition from private publishers and is undergoing a redesign.

Reuters

Editor-in-chief Than Myint Tun holds up a dummy of the New Light of Myanmar in Naypyitaw, Sept. 19.

Reuters reports — The New Light of Myanmar has an image problem. That's putting it mildly.

Created in 1993 as the mouthpiece of a military junta, the newspaper once described democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi as "obsessed by lust and superstition," while praising the achievements of generals who kept Myanmar in poverty and fear. Its nickname was "The New Lies of Myanmar."

Now, with the junta gone and a reformist government in power, the mouthpiece is getting a makeover.

"Feel free to ask me any question! We are very transparent now!" cries Than Myint Tun, its affable, betel-nut-chewing editor-in-chief during a Reuters tour of the state-run newspaper, the first by the international media.

The New Light is the country's only English-language daily -- but not for long. Among its reforms since taking power last year, Myanmar's quasi-civilian government has effectively scrapped censorship, boosting an already vibrant weekly newspaper scene. It will allow the publication of privately owned dailies in early 2013.

With competition looming, the long-derided New Light is battling for relevance and readers.

Hate-filled propaganda has been replaced by lively editorials and entertainment news. Cartoons that once showed Suu Kyi as a toothless crone now comment on hot issues such as political transparency and the popularity of Western dress. Full story…

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was made available to NBC News on Oct. 17, 2012.

Reuters

Employees manually insert advertising supplements into freshly printed copies of the New Light of Myanmar at the newspaper's office in Naypyitaw, Sept. 18.

Reuters

Employees manually insert advertising supplements into freshly printed copies of New Light of Myanmar at the newspaper's office in Naypyitaw, Sept, 18.

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