by Gulf Today YANGON: Several women villagers from Myanmar’s Rohingya minority have been shot dead in a confrontation with security officials, police and activists said on Wednesday.
A police officer in Mrauk-U township in western Rakhine state said on Wednesday that three women died in Parein village, where they were part of a crowd that defied efforts to relocate them from the housing in which they have been living since their original homes were burned by Buddhists in a wave of sectarian clashes last year.
The incident came as hundreds of world leaders, business chiefs and media began arriving in Myanmar for Thursday’s World Economic Forum on East Asia — a chance for the former pariah to showcase its economic and political reforms.
The latest bloodshed happened on Tuesday at a camp at Parein in Rakhine state after some Rohingya refused to move to new shelters provided by the authorities, local police officer Maung Maung Mya told AFP by telephone. “The three died as warning shots were fired,” he said, adding that four others were injured.
“They think they will lose their own land if they are moved to the new shelters. So they don’t move.”
Up to 140,000 people — mainly Rohingya — were displaced in two waves of sectarian unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine last year that left about 200 people dead.
Myanmar views its population of roughly 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
They are considered by the United Nations to be one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.
A website covering Rohingya news, Rohingya Blogger, said four women were shot dead and five other villagers wounded in the Tuesday confrontation, which broke out when workers from another township came to unload wood to build new dwellings.
It said that when Parein villagers sought to stop the unloading, they began quarrelling with police, who opened fire on them.
The police officer said some in the Rohingya crowd carried knives, sticks and slingshots.
But aid workers note that many of the camps, almost all of which shelter Muslim Rohingyas, have inadequate shelter, medical care and other basic services.
While the conflict seemed contained at the time, communal violence spread this year to central and northeastern Myanmar, with Muslims again targeted as several dozen people were killed.
The violence threatens to undermine the political and economic reforms undertaken by President Thein Sein, who came to power as an elected chief executive in 2011 after almost five decades of military rule.
Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government has surprised the world since coming to power with dramatic political and economic changes that have led to the lifting of most Western sanctions.
Hundreds of political prisoners have been freed, democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi has been welcomed into a new parliament and tentative ceasefires have been reached in the country’s multiple ethnic civil wars. But some rights groups argue that the religious violence shows the lifting of the sanctions was premature.
Similar, though, not fatal confrontations over relocation of Rohingyas were reported last month, when officials sought to move reluctant residents from camps thought to be vulnerable to damage from an expected cyclone.
Human Rights Watch in April accused Myanmar of “a campaign of ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya, citing evidence of mass graves and forced displacement affecting tens of thousands.
The government has rejected the allegations.
Agencies
