BAGO/YANGON: Scores of Buddhists ransacked a mosque in central Myanmar forcing Muslims to seek refuge in a police station overnight, officials and residents said Friday, as tensions between the two groups continued to plague the Southeast Asian nation.
Villagers from Thayethamin, a remote settlement a two-hours’ drive northeast of Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, destroyed the mosque after a dispute over its construction, and beat up at least one Muslim man, media and a police spokesman said.
Bouts of anti-Muslim violence have left scores dead across Myanmar since 2012 and the febrile atmosphere has seen Aung San Suu Kyi’s new government come under pressure to address the country’s secretarian divides.
The most recent violence erupted on Thursday afternoon as a mob of around 200 Buddhists rampaged through a Muslim area of a village in Bago province following an argument between neighbors over the building of a Muslim school.
“It started when a Muslim man and Buddhist women started to argue and then people came to fight him,” Hla Tint, the village administrator, told AFP.
Country leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won in a landslide in historic November elections, faces a daunting task of resolving ethnic and religious tensions and ending human rights abuses in the state.
On Monday, she told the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, that the government would not use the term “Rohingya” because it viewed it as inflammatory.
The Rohingya identify themselves by that name. Many have lived in Myanmar for generations, but many Myanmar Buddhists call them “Bengali,” a term implying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Suu Kyi has appealed to people not to use either term, and instead refer to the “Muslim community in Rakhine State.”
The UN on Monday called on the Nobel peace prize winner to make putting an end to the abuses the government’s “top priority.” It said that the violations, which include executions and torture, may amount to crimes against humanity.
“Things are well under control now and action hasn’t been taken against anyone yet,” said colonel Zaw Khin Aung, spokesman of the Police Headquarters based in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyitaw.
The violence coincides with a rise in tensions over how to refer to the Rohingya, a 1.1-million group of Muslims living in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine since the 2012 violence.
Villagers from Thayethamin, a remote settlement a two-hours’ drive northeast of Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, destroyed the mosque after a dispute over its construction, and beat up at least one Muslim man, media and a police spokesman said.
Bouts of anti-Muslim violence have left scores dead across Myanmar since 2012 and the febrile atmosphere has seen Aung San Suu Kyi’s new government come under pressure to address the country’s secretarian divides.
The most recent violence erupted on Thursday afternoon as a mob of around 200 Buddhists rampaged through a Muslim area of a village in Bago province following an argument between neighbors over the building of a Muslim school.
“It started when a Muslim man and Buddhist women started to argue and then people came to fight him,” Hla Tint, the village administrator, told AFP.
Country leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won in a landslide in historic November elections, faces a daunting task of resolving ethnic and religious tensions and ending human rights abuses in the state.
On Monday, she told the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, that the government would not use the term “Rohingya” because it viewed it as inflammatory.
The Rohingya identify themselves by that name. Many have lived in Myanmar for generations, but many Myanmar Buddhists call them “Bengali,” a term implying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Suu Kyi has appealed to people not to use either term, and instead refer to the “Muslim community in Rakhine State.”
The UN on Monday called on the Nobel peace prize winner to make putting an end to the abuses the government’s “top priority.” It said that the violations, which include executions and torture, may amount to crimes against humanity.
“Things are well under control now and action hasn’t been taken against anyone yet,” said colonel Zaw Khin Aung, spokesman of the Police Headquarters based in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyitaw.
The violence coincides with a rise in tensions over how to refer to the Rohingya, a 1.1-million group of Muslims living in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine since the 2012 violence.
