Myanmar: Nationalists block another Muslim gathering
By Kyaw Ye Lynn
Anadolu Agency
January 15, 2017
Cancelation of event marks second time this month that
Buddhist hardliners impeded a Muslim gathering
YANGON, Myanmar -- A Muslim gathering in a small Myanmar
town has been canceled due to a protest from a Buddhist nationalist group --
the second such disturbance in the country this month.
The event due to be held in the town of Pyay in Bago region,
around 440 kilometers northwest of Myanmar’s former capital Yangon, was
canceled last minute after a Yangon-based nationalist group pressured local
authorities and Muslim residents, the Irrawaddy online magazine reported.
The report said authorities had permitted the ceremony --
scheduled to be held for at least three hours Sunday -- to last 30 minutes
after negotiations Saturday with the nationalist group and Muslim residents.
The hardline Buddhist nationalists, however, later demanded
that the ceremony be called off entirely.
“We have had the ceremony every year peacefully,” Kyaw
Naing, a member of the festival organizing committee, was quoted by the
magazine as saying.
He underlined that the Muslim community agreed to cancel
their ceremony over the protest to demonstrate that Islam is a religion of
peace for the people of Myanmar as well as across the world.
“Authority actually already granted permission to us for the
ceremony,” he said.
The incident marked the second time this month that Buddhist
hardliners impeded a Muslim gathering.
On Jan. 8, a crowd including hardline Buddhist monks -- who
many blame for a rise in persecution of Muslims in Myanmar -- disturbed a
religious service in Yangon’s Botataung Township, accusing the worshipers of
holding it without the approval of local authorities.
Security personnel had to be deployed to guard the
gathering, and Muslim residents later complained that some nationalists had
behaved badly as they tried to pray.
Hardline nationalist monks -- such as the Organization for
the Protection of Race and Religion (Ma Ba Tha) -- rose to prominence in
Myanmar on the back of communal violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya
Muslims in western Rakhine State in mid-2012.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric from the group has been seen as
deliberately stoking the flames of religious hatred in the predominantly
Buddhist country.