Human Rights Watch has asked Myanmar to guarantee the protection of religious freedom for all minorities, amid growing tensions between different belief systems in the country, according to a report released on Monday.
In late April, Myanmar authorities had closed down two Islamic religious schools, or madrasas, in Rangoon, erstwhile capital and the country’s most populated city.
“Burmese local officials’ craven capitulation to mob demands (from ultranationalists) to shutter two Muslim schools is the latest government failure to protect Burma’s religious minorities,” said Phil Robertson, HRW deputy Asia director.
The human rights nonprofit called for immediate reopening of the madrasas, and asked the government to publicly express its position on ending restrictions against minority religions.
Wunna Shwe, joint secretary general of the Islamic Religious Affairs Council, told HRW, closures like this are not uncommon in Myanmar and also affect other minority religious groups, including the Christians.
Buddhism is the majority religion in Myanmar and is practiced by 87.9 percent of its citizens, followed by Christianity (6.2 percent) and Islam (4.3 percent), according to the 2014 official census.
Between October 2016 and February this year, the army had conducted a security offensive in the western province of Arakan, following an attack on three police posts, allegedly by insurgents from the Rohingya Muslim minority community.
The Oct. 9 attack that killed nine police personnel, led to a nearly four-month long campaign of Rohingya persecution by the army, claiming hundreds of lives from the community.
Around 75,000 Rohingyas had fled the country and taken refuge in neighboring Bangladesh.
The Rohingya issue is a sensitive one in Myanmar, where radical Buddhist groups led the previous government to adopt multiple discriminatory measures against them, including restrictions on their freedom of movement.
More than a million Rohingyas live in Arakan, where they have suffered discrimination since the outbreak of sectarian violence in 2012 that left at least 160 people dead, and since then around 120,000 of them have lived severely restricted lives in 67 camps.
Myanmar do not recognize the Rohingyas as citizens and shun them as Bangladeshi immigrants.
“Burma’s leaders can’t sit back and wait for the next round of violence against a minority group; they need to take proactive steps to address religious tensions and disputes so that all can practice their religion peacefully and safely,” said Robertson
Source : HRW
