Police fired rubber bullets to break up a mob which stoned the home of a Muslim butcher in central Myanmar, authorities said yesterday, as religious tensions rise amid a surge of violence in the west.  The mob attack on Sunday night in the Magway region of the mainly Buddhist nation was fuelled by anger over the deepening crisis in the western state of Rakhine, according to a government press release. Rakhine has been gripped by violence since late August, triggering brutal army reprisals that have left hundreds dead and pushed nearly 300,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh. The exodus accounts for nearly a third of Myanmar’s Rohingya population, creating a humanitarian emergency as a flood of famished and wounded refugees pour into Bangladesh’s already overcrowded camps.
 Those tensions bubbled over in Taung Twin Gyi township on Sunday night when dozens of villagers in a 400-strong crowd sang the national anthem and lobbed rocks at the home of a Muslim butcher before marching over to the local mosque, where police dispersed the mob. Police arrested one man, 30-year-old Hnin Ko Ko Lin, who said the group acted because “they could not accept the things that happened in Rakhine”, according to the government statement.
 Min Thein, a lower house MP for the township, confirmed to AFP that the butcher was Muslim.
 “Now we are urging all the people to stay calm and we have already told the Muslim residents to stay in their homes,” he added.  Buddhist hardliners have led sporadic attacks on mosques and other Islamic sites across the country.  But western Rakhine, which is home to the Rohingya, has remained the epicentre of religious unrest. 
Myanmar has denied the Rohingya citizenship, claiming they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and severely restricted their access to jobs, healthcare and other basic services.




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