Arakan News Agency
Myanmar authorities on Thursday shut down a mosque and a religious school in a Muslim-populated village in the eastern city of Yangon.
According to local media, the authorities closed the mosque and the school located in a village belonging to the area of Oakkan, which is 100 Km away from Yangon, for the establishment of activities inside, without official permission.
In a press statement, a senior official in the Oakkan region, Mr. Miyo Lewin, said that he had previously ordered the Myanmar authorities to close the mosque and the school in order to prevent the growing problems between Muslims and Buddhists.
Myanmar’s population accounts for about 4.3 percent of the country’s 51.5 million population, according to a 2014 census.
Most of the country’s Muslims are descended from the Rohingya minority, whose presence is concentrated in Arakan (Rakhine), one of Myanmar’s poorest provinces.
Since 2012, the province of Arakan (west) has witnessed violence between Buddhists and Muslims, killing hundreds of people and displacing hundreds of thousands, according to international human rights reports.
The Government of Myanmar considers Rohingya “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh” under a law passed in 1982, while the United Nations classifies them as “the most persecuted religious minority in the world”.
