Myanmar Buddhist monks take part in an anti-Muslim demonstration in Sittwe located in Rakhine State on July 3, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
Myanmar’s Muslim leaders have questioned the existence of religious freedom in the predominately Buddhist country after hardline Buddhists stopped an Islamic religious ceremony.
Kyaw Nyein, secretary of the Ulama Islam Organization in Yangon, said that the organizers have already got permission to hold a ceremony Jan. 8 commemorating the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday.
"The attempt to stop a Muslim ceremony by a handful of hard-line Buddhists has prompted us to reflect on the right to worship, freedom of religion and the effectiveness of the rule of law in the country," Kyaw Nyein told ucanews.com.
The planned ceremony in Thaketa Township, Yangon’s outskirts was cancelled due to pressure from hard-line Buddhist groups.
A handful of maroon-robed monks entered the Young Men’s Christian Association in Yangon on Jan 8 where the ceremony was being held and demanded it be shut down.
Soe Hlaing, a Muslim leader and the main organizer of the event in Yangon, said that the agenda was reduced to just an hour-long program instead of the planned three hours.
Five monks from the local township’s Sangha committee came and helped ease tensions with the dozens of hard-line Buddhists.
"We have been holding the ceremony annually for eight years and we received permission for this year but we faced difficulty in holding it successfully," Soe Hlaing told ucanews.com.
In recent years hard-line Buddhists have attempted to restrict Muslim worship, destroying mosques and banning festivals of the ritual slaughter of cattle during the Eid al-Adha festival.
The latest anti-Muslim case erupted during the 12-day visit of Yanghee Lee, the Untied Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar. Her itinerary included Rakhine State, where thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring Bangladesh amid a bloody military crackdown in the region following Oct 9 border attacks by alleged Muslim militants.
"The events of the last few months have shown that the international community must remain vigilant in monitoring the human rights situation there," Lee said in a statement on Jan. 6.
Across the Buddhist-majority country, anti-Muslim sentiments have also triggered conflict, particularly in Rakhine State, where violence in 2012 left more than 200 people dead and forced tens of thousands — mostly Rohingya Muslims — to flee their homes. An estimated 140,000 people in the state still live in temporary camps for displaced people.
There are an estimated 1.1 million Rohingya people in Rakhine but they were not accounted for in the 2014 census.
Muslims accounted for 4.3 percent of the Buddhist-majority country according to the 2014 census. Muslims first arrived in the 9th century and are mostly of Indian, Chinese or Pathi descent.
