Burma: Hard-Line Monks Deny Involvement In Yangon Violence

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An ultra-nationalist monk organization in Myanmar on May 16 denied it was involved in a violent confrontation between Buddhists and Muslims last week in a Yangon neighborhood where monks had claimed that ethnic Rohingya Muslims were hiding illegally.

Monks from the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union, also known at Ma Ba Tha, told a press conference in Yangon that the group had been falsely accused of provoking a May 9 conflict with Muslims in Mingala Taungnyunt township in the east-central part of the city, Radio Free Asia reported .

Two people were injured during the melee during which police had to fire warning shots into the air to disperse a crowd that had gathered.

“We are holding this press conference because Ma Ba Tha didn’t know or do anything regarding the incident in Mingala Taungnyunt, though some well-known people have accused us of doing it,” said Pyinnya Wara, a Ma Ba Tha leader. “[The] monks who participated in the incident said they were not from Ma Ba Tha.”

“We see that some people are trying to destroy Ma Ba Tha’s image,” he said.

A monk named Thuseitta from the Patriotic Young Monks Union told RFA on May 10 that Ma Ba Tha monks had received information that some Rohingya were hiding in apartments on two floors of a building in Mingala Taungnyunt township. They then alerted police and immigration officials who searched the premises.

After police determined that no one in the apartments was there illegally, a scuffle between the monks and Muslim residents broke out as the monks left the building.

UCA News

The Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News, UCAN) is the leading independent Catholic news source in Asia. A network of journalists and editors that spans East, South and Southeast Asia, UCA News has for four decades aimed to provide the most accurate and up-to-date news, feature, commentary and analysis, and multimedia content on social, political and religious developments that relate or are of interest to the Catholic Church in Asia.

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