Burmese police opened fire on angry demonstrators in the western part of the country on Tuesday evening, killing seven people in the tense state of Rakhine, the scene of violence against the Muslim minority of the Rohingya.
It occurred at a gathering of some 5,000 Buddhists late Tuesday as part of a national event in Marawek Bo, a town not covered by the army’s bloody security crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya minority.
“Seven people were killed and 13 injured in Muruk-yu,” said police spokesman Miyo Sui in Rakhine, the western state that has been the scene of violence since August, particularly the Rohingya.
It was not clear why violence erupted during the rally. But there has always been hostility among ethnic Rakhine ethnic descendants, many of whom suffer from poverty and marginalization, and the Burmese-dominated Burmese government.
The clashes came on the same day that an agreement was signed between Burma and Bangladesh to begin repatriating some 665,000 Muslim Rohingyas from their overcrowded camps across the border.
The Rohingyas are considered illegal “Bengali” immigrants who have settled in Buddhist territory.
A police spokesman accused the crowd of “starting violence” by throwing stones, storming a government headquarters in the area and raising the flag of Rakhine state.
The pictures showed the bodies lying on the ground in a temporary morgue at U Uruk Wednesday while the victims’ clothing appeared to be stained with blood.
The firing raises tensions in the region.
“The issue of the use of firearms can not be forgiven,” said the MP from the Marraku U Party of the National Arakan Party or Hala Su, confirming the death toll and describing the police’s conduct as “crime”.
An eyewitness, Ney Ni Kant, 29, said clashes could have been avoided had the police intervened more quickly.
“The police had enough time to prepare to prevent the crowd from reaching the building … They could close the street but they did not,” he told AFP.
– Civil disputes –
Murauku, which houses an ancient Buddhist complex from the last kingdom of Rakhine, lies a few dozen kilometers from the epicenter of violence that has left hundreds of thousands of Ruhinges fleeing Bangladesh since August.
The army led a major security crackdown on the Rohingya after gunmen launched attacks on security posts that killed about 10 police.
The Rohingyas accuse security forces backed by hard-line Rakhine ethnic gangs of burning hundreds of villages belonging to the Muslim minority and forcing their members to flee.
Refugees arriving in Bangladesh carried similar accounts of the minority being killed, raped and burned in acts of violence deemed by the military a legitimate response to insurgent attacks.
Rakhine’s state, torn by civil strife, already includes a rebellious Buddhist army called the Arakan Army and is fighting the Burmese army.
The latest clashes are part of state-sponsored violence, particularly against the Rohingya in a country where several more ethnic insurgent movements are active.
But observers warned Tuesday’s violence could open a new chapter of unrest in the state.
For its part, the United Nations expressed “regret” for the deaths and urged an investigation into “any disproportionate use of force.”
