CROWDS PROTEST UN HUMAN RIGHT VISIT TO MYANMAR
YANGON - Hundreds of demonstrators protested outside an
airport in restive western Myanmar on Thursday against a human rights visit by
a United Nations envoy, police told AFP. Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, flew into Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, on Thursday evening and was greeted by crowds of chanting, placard-waving protesters.
The state has seen spates of deadly religious violence between local ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingya minority in recent years.
In August 2013 a previous UN rights envoy was forced to
abandon plans to visit Rohingya displaced by a spate of anti-Muslim violence in
the town of Meiktila, central Myanmar, when his convoy came under attack by an
angry mob. Lee's visit comes days after the UN adopted a resolution urging Myanmar to grant citizenship to the minority group, viewed by the state as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants with restrictions placed on their movement, marriages and economic opportunities.
Police said around 1,000 people, including 100 monks, had gathered at the airport.
Some chanted "Yanghee Lee Get Out".
Source: AsiaOne...More...
BUDDHIST MOBS BURNT MUSLIM SCHOOL IN MYANMAR
Muslims in Myanmar’s second-largest city accused police on Saturday
of standing by as a Buddhist mob went on a rampage, torching a school
and other buildings.
Angry mourners, some carrying crude weapons, rioted in Mandalay after
the funeral of a 36-year-old Buddhist victim of the country’s latest
eruption of religious unrest, witnesses said.
A school and dormitory on the outskirts of the city were seen charred and damaged on Saturday.
More than 70 police were here but did nothing, said Win Naing, a
Muslim donor to the school, who watched the attack from his hiding place
in the home of a Buddhist friend.
Win Naing says some of the rioters were armed with sticks, metal pipes and even saws.
A Muslim member of an interfaith group in the city, Zaw Zaw Latt, also witnessed the incident.
Police could have stopped the mob but they did not, he said.
It's believed no children were in the school at the time and there are no reports of injury from the attack.
Several days of violence, sparked by an accusation of rape, have also left one Muslim dead and 14 other people injured.
There has been no immediate comment from police.
At
least 250 people have been killed across Myanmar since 2012 in
Buddhist-Muslim clashes that have cast a shadow over the country's
political reforms.
Police have been accused of inaction in the past and the government has deployed soldiers in some cases to restore order.
A night time curfew has been imposed in Mandalay and nine people have been arrested in connection with the recent violence.
Source: AFP
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