Arakan News Agency
The Myanmar authorities have announced the reopening of schools for the children of Buddhists in the state of Rakhine (Arakan) in towns where religious violence has taken hold in the western state and return to stability, according to media close to the government on Sunday, but Muslim “Rohingya“continues to flee these areas under attacks by the Myanmar army and groups of extremist Buddhists on their villages.
Arakan state is plagued by violence after the unrest erupted in late August.
Nearly half of the approximately 1 million Rohingya Muslims in Arakan have fled to Bangladesh since the outbreak of violence, causing the world’s largest refugee crisis, while refugees say their villages were burned by the army and extremist Buddhist gangs in Arakan. Only 30,000 Buddhists and Hindus have been displaced in the state.
“Schools have reopened in the towns of Maungdaw and Buthidaung, with the return of stability,” according to a report by the New Global Light of Myanmar newspaper on Sunday.
“The schools that have been opened are located in certain safe villages,” the report said, apparently referring to areas inhabited by Buddhists, whom authorities regard as officially recognized ethnic minorities in the country.
“We need to think about schools in Bengali villages,” Arakan’s education authorities were quoted as saying.
