Police in Sittwe used rubber bullets and tear gas last night to disperse hundreds of Buddhist protesters who tried to block a shipment of aid from reaching Rohingya civilians in northern Rakhine State.
The protesters gathered at around 3pm yesterday, many of them carrying sticks and metal bars, to prevent the boat from being loaded with 50 tons of aid, including solar lamps, sanitary towels, clothes, blankets, tarpaulin, water buckets, mosquito nets, and kitchen utensils. Some of the protesters threw petrol bombs. It took 200 police officers to disperse them by 11pm.
“People thought the aid was only for the Bengalis,” Rakhine State government secretary Tin Maung Swe told Reuters, using a term that implies that Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Witnesses said several people were injured. Eight protesters were ultimately arrested.
The boat reportedly belonged to a local Rakhine woman and had been rented by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to bring aid to people affected by military clearance operations that began on August 25, when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation attacked dozens of police outposts in the state.
The clearance operations have also pushed over 420,000 Rohingya over the border into Bangladesh.
Since the operations began, the Myanmar government has accused UN and other aid agencies of showing preference for Muslims over Buddhists and of aiding “terrorists.”
Though ICRC staff on the scene attempted to assure protesters that the aid would be distributed in a “neutral and impartial manner,” they did not succeed in deescalating the confrontation.
“We are explaining to the community members who approached the boats about the activities of the Red Cross,” Maria Cecilia Goin, a communications officer at the ICRC Yangon, said after the fracas. “It’s important for them to understand that we are working in neutral and impartial way with full transparency with the Myanmar authorities.”
The boat remained in Sittwe after the protesters were dispersed.
The protest has been interpreted as a sign of rising communal tensions in Sittwe, where Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya live in segregated ghettoes.
In July, a Buddhist mob armed with bricks and sticks attacked a group of Rohingya men who had received temporary permission to leave their neighborhood. Despite having a police escort, one Rohingya man was killed, and another was severely injured.
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