Buddhist villagers fled their homes yesterday as renewed sectarian violence hit western Myanmar, officials said, blaming Muslim Rohingya people from a “neighboring country” for the unrest.
Police and army reinforcements have been deployed to Rakhine State — which borders Bangladesh — to quell the violence after villagers’ homes were set ablaze early yesterday, one government official said.
Unrest flared on Friday when at least four Buddhists were killed in riots in Rakhine, which is home to large numbers of Rohingya, a Muslim group described by the UN as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.
Photo: AFP
Armed Rohingya came early in the morning “to destroy and burn down the villages,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They came from the neighboring country by boats.”
Myanmar, which considers the stateless Rohingya as foreigners and not one of the nation’s ethnic groups, has an estimated 750,000 Rohingya, living mainly in Rakhine, according to the UN.
Another 1 million or more are believed to live in exile in other countries.
“We can confirm so far that about 386 houses were burnt down ... and some buildings were also destroyed by Rohingyas,” the official said.
A second official confirmed the build-up of security forces as the state media said a night curfew would remain until further notice and announced a ban on five or more people gathering in some villages.
“The military commands have been increased ... We can be attacked by Rohingyas in the future inside the country. We all should be in alert,” said the second official, who also did not want to be named.
Tensions have flared in Rakhine since 10 Muslims on a bus were killed by an angry Buddhist mob on June 2, believing mistakenly that the perpetrators of the recent rape and murder of a Rakhine woman were on board.
Religious clashes occur periodically in Myanmar, and Rakhine State — which has a large Muslim minority population — is a flashpoint for tensions.
Buddhists make up about 89 percent of the population of Myanmar, with Muslims officially representing 4 percent.
The violence threatens to overshadow reconciliation efforts following a series of dramatic political reforms that came after the end of almost half a century of military rule last year.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS