According to residents of Okkan,
110km north of Yangon, a deadly anti-Muslim violence flared up on Tuesday, leading
to the death of at least one person and several others injured after a mob of
angry Buddhists overran two mosques and set fire to hundreds of homes.
Eye witness accounts indicates
that the Buddhists, numbering about 400, went on a rampage through the town of
Okkan, armed with bricks and sticks.
Two mosques were overrun and
looted in the process, while over 100 Muslim homes were burned to the ground by
the angry mob.
According to an old shopkeeper in
Okkan, Khin Maung Than, “they came around 1pm and most of the people were from
this town, not from outside. There were around 50 of them.”
Distressed villagers in Chauk Tal,
an outlying village, were struggling to put out the blaze as several structures
were still burning down as at Tuesday night with intense ferocity.
This incident is the latest anti-Muslim
violence to shake Myanmar since late March.
Earlier this month, Human Rights
Watch released a report in which they accused the Myanmar government , security
forces, Buddhist monks and other politicians of running a campaign of ‘ethnic
cleansing’ against the Rohingya muslims.
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