Myanmar authorities have recently bulldozed 16 mosques out of 17 mosques in villages of Haindafara, Maungdaw township in the northern Rakhine state of the country.
Myanmar authorities have recently bulldozed 16 mosques out of 17 mosques in villages of Haindafara, Maungdaw township in the northern Rakhine state of the country.
This is according to a report by Arakan News, which added that the villages in the area of Haindafara were under massive fire since the beginning of a massive military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in late August. After the massive fire devastation only 17 Mosques along with few Rohingya houses had remained. But in late November, the authorities targeted the remaining 17 mosques and started using bulldozers to demolish the holy structures. “After burning our houses, they (authorities) are targeting our religious structures so openly and government set them free to do so” explained one of the villagers in extreme misery. Now out of the 17 Mosques only one remains and is expected to be demolished in the same way according to the villagers. It comes as more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled the violence in Rakhine to Bangladesh since late August, bringing with them horrifying stories of massacres, gang rape and arson by Myanmar’s military forces and Buddhist mobs. Myanmar’s government calls Rohingya Muslims Bengalis to imply they are immigrants from Bangladesh. It has defied calls by the UN and the international community to grant citizenship to the stateless Muslims, whose roots in the country go back centuries. The United Nations’ top human rights official has branded Myanmar’s “cruel military operation” against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
