Arakan News Agency
Muslim in Myanmar have called on the government to reconsider the closure of two Muslim schools in Yangon in an arbitrary response after pressure from an extremist Buddhist organization.
Arakan news agency reported that Muslims had written a petition to the city’s governor protesting the behavior of monks and members of the Ma Bha Tha organization and for vandalizing the two schools those were built many years ago, saying that for many generations they had taken care these schools and many of the city’s Muslims studied in these schools.
About 10 monks and dozens of their supporters demonstrated last Friday afternoon at these two Muslim schools and later closed them with chains and locks without permission from the authorities. The demonstrators claimed that they had built them illegally and performed Islamic prayers and rituals without the permission of the authorities, which stood without interference.
The elders of the two schools called on the authorities to reopen schools, punish the perpetrators and bring them to justice. They also called for the termination of the Ma Bha Tha plan led by the monk Wirathu to ignite sectarian strife and provoke violence between Muslims and Buddhists in Yangon City, citing the events in Arakan. Ma Bha Tha created a crisis of sectarian conflict between the Muslims Rohingya and the Buddhist Rakhine.
