Dozens of people have been killed and thousands of homes burned to the ground in Myanmar's volatile Rakhine state in recent days, amid an upsurge in violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims that prompted the government to declare a state of emergency. CNN looks at the background to the ongoing communal violence in the Southeast Asian country. What's behind the unrest? Overnight curfews in several towns and villages across the region have been in place since May, when the arrest of three Muslim men suspected of raping and killing a Buddhist woman sparked deadly clashes between the Rohingya and Rakhine Buddhists. Two of the men have since been sentenced to death, while the third hanged himself while in detention, the government-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported on its website.
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Rohingya are a stateless Muslim minority living in Myanmar's Rakhine state
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They have clashed frequently with the western state's Buddhist population
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Dozens killed and thousands of homes burned down in recent violence
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Myanmar's president pledged to address the issue during recent U.N. visit
"It could make important contributions to restoring peace and harmony in the state and in creating a conducive environment for a more inclusive way forward to tackle the underlying causes of the violence, including the condition of the @placeholder communities in Rakhine."