A Buddhist group in Myanmar’s religiously divided Rakhine state failed in their bid to pressure local authorities to expel Muslims from Sittwe city.
Soe Naing from the Rakhine National Network, a civil society organization from Sittwe, said that they sent a letter with around 400 signatures to the state’s chief minister last week that demanded Muslims from the city’s Aung Mingalar quarter be expelled.
“We are concerned that the number of Muslims in the quarter have grown and some have been living there illegally so we raised it to the state government,” Soe Naing told ucanews.com.
“And we don’t want a conflict between the two communities so we want them to be expelled and relocated outside of the city,” said Soe Naing.
An estimated 4,500 Muslims live in the city’s Aung Mingalar quarter in what has been described as ghetto-like conditions. With security forces guarding the quarter, the residing Muslims have been severely limited in their movements since violence occurred between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in 2012.
Many Muslim residents in the state were confined to camps for internally displaced people in 2012 but Aung Mingalar’s residents were allowed to remain in their homes.
Most people in the quarter identify themselves as Rohingya while local Rakhines and others across Myanmar refer to them as Bengalis, implying they are interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh.
Soe Naing added that elderly monks and some Buddhist laypeople met with the Rakhine chief minister who responded that it is not possible to expel Muslims from the quarter.
Local officials would instead check the Muslim population on May 21.
“We will closely monitor the process of identity checks by local officials as it remains unclear how the government will handle things if they find some Muslims who have lived there illegally,” said Soe Naing.
Shwe Hla, a Muslim leader from Aung Mingalar, said that he and two other representatives from the community were called into a meeting with local officials on May 12 to discuss the identity checking process.
“The number of people here have not increased but this is an accusation from local Rakhine so we will collaborate with local officials for the checking process,” said Shwe Hla.
Aung Mingalar had been a temporary lockdown since May 14 after a small group of protesters gathered in front of police barricades.
A twice-weekly run to a market for those living in a camp for internally displaced people situated just outside Sittwe has also been limited according to Myanmar Times.
The U.N. and rights groups have called on the government to lift restrictions imposed on around 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state.
The new government led by Aung San Suu Kyi has not publicly released its policy on how it will deal with the religious divisions in Rakhine.
This story was originally published by ucanews.com.
