Amid the charged with tensions and hatred conditions against the Muslims in Burma, a bus carrying a group of Muslim scholars and preachers in the Buddhism town “Taunggoke’’ – it’s a town where the existence of Muslims is very rare – was attacked by a group of “Magen” Buddhists. Nearly around 466 Buddhists gathered to beat them with sticks on their faces and heads after tying their hands and legs forgetting all the meanings of humanity.
To raise the strife of sedition the Buddhists claimed to have done so in retaliation for the killing of a Buddhist woman by Muslims after raping her, pointing out that they suspected that these preachers were the ones who did it. Even knowing that the preachers are not originally from that town, but they were only passing by the town during their journey.
As usual, the government’s position was shameful; it arrested 4 of those Muslims as being suspects in the case of the woman, and left hundreds who participated in the murder of these innocent people, prompting the spark of protest against the policy of discrimination and racism against the Muslim minority.
On Friday, the 8th of June, the army surrounded the Muslims mosques, in anticipation for any demonstrations or protests because of the killing of the ten scholars. This was considered a chance for the Buddhists to clash with the protesters, a situation which led the government to impose a curfew. The Buddhism police then surrounded the homes of the Rohingya Muslims, while leaving the Magen Buddhists free crawling on the villages and the homes of Muslims with swords and knives to start an organized campaign of extermination against Muslims in a crime in which even the elderly and women from the Buddhists had participated.
Thus began a series of killings and burning of neighborhoods and villages under the sight of the Buddhism police and the silence of the government, with the latest only raising a few calls to calm the situation. The violence spread to other places dominated by the Buddhists like Akyab or Sittwe and they burned the Muslims’ neighborhoods completely, taking advantage of a curfew imposed by the government in areas with Muslim majority, and guaranteeing that no Muslim would be able to leave his place.
As a result of this violence and the Holocaust; Muslims of Arakan became homeless – after their homes were burned – what caused them to escape to the sea without food or drink to die even before they reach from Akyab to the nearest possible place.
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