70-year-old Chiute Tamang, his wife, daughter and son-in-law lost their house when the earth shook on Apr 25, 2015 in Nepal. They now lives a one-room cabin made of a wooden skeleton encased in corrugated iron. Credit: Robert Stefanicki/IPS

By Robert Stefanicki
KATHMANDU, Jul 12 2015 (IPS)

70-year-old Chiute Tamang was working in his field when the earth shook on Apr 25. He grabbed a tree. His wife and daughter were inside the house at the time, but managed to run out. In the blink of an eye, the building turned into a heap of stones. They were the lucky ones.

“Earthquakes don’t kill, buildings do” – this otherwise common knowledge – had just reached Nepal. Almost all the victims were buried in the rubble of their houses made by untrained masons of stones barely stuck together with mud. It is a very popular method, because it is the cheapest – stones and mud are free, bricks and cement cost.

In Ramche, Chiute’s village scattered over the terraced hills of district Dhading, 38 km northwest of Kathmandu, 168 houses out of a total 181 are no longer inhabitable.”Only time will tell if, in the process of planning reconstruction, the government of Nepal will use an opportunity to find out why the Tamangs are so vulnerable to natural disasters and what can be done to protect them from future calamities”

According to the latest government report, the disaster damaged 607,212 buildings in 16 districts. Of them, 63 percent in areas dominated by Tamangs – the largest and the most destitute group among the Tibeto-Burman speaking peoples of the Himalayan region – although they constitute less than six percent (1.35 million) of Nepal’s population.

”Earthquakes don’t kill, inequity does” – out of 8,844 people who died in the earthquake, 3,012 were Tamangs. Over 50 percent of the victims belonged to the marginalised communities. More than half the victims were women.

Ramche is a Tamang village. Some of the people own small plots of land on which they grow corn and potatoes of walnut size, but crops can feed the farmers’ family only for two to three months. For the rest of the year they live on contracted labour.

The residents of Ramche admit they are very poor. Why? Because, their answer goes, their fathers were poor, as well as the fathers of their fathers. They accept this as a judgment of fate and do not feel discriminated against, only showing how inequity is grown into the tissue of the society, the result of concerted exploitation for centuries.

This brawny hill tribe has always provided a labour reserve pool for the rulers of Kathmandu. In the past, Tamangs were prevented from joining the administration and the military. Even today they may man the barricades but have little role in the upper hierarchy of the armed forces or police, and are unrepresented in the country´s national affairs.

Being Buddhists did not immunise Tamangs from the caste system evolved by ruling Hindus. Those who wield power belong to Brahmin, Newars and Chhetri people and these “well-born” elites look down on the Tamangs.

In the blink of an eye, houses turned into heaps of stones when the Apr. 25, 2015 earthquake hit Nepal. Credit: Robert Stefanicki/IPS

Economic deprivation has increased the influx of indigent peasants to the job markets of Kathmandu, where they make up half of the porters and the majority of three-wheeler tempo (”taxi”) drivers. Prison surveys have shown that a disproportionate number of Tamangs are behind bars for criminal offences.

They have never counted on any government’s help, and this time is no different. After the earthquake, the residents of Ramche helped each other, cooked meals together and joined hands to raise themselves up from the rubble. With a little help from NGOs, the situation was brought under control.

One week after the disaster, the residents of Ramche were given blankets, tarpaulins and mosquito nets funded by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO).

Today, the whole village is queuing at the barracks where ADRA, the Nepalese NGO, is handing out big plastic water jars with the blue logo of the European Union and “sanitary kits”: a few tubes of toothpaste, toothbrushes, water purification tablets, sanitary napkins and birth control pills. A young female activist tirelessly explains to one villager after another how to use these items.

Chiute Tamang’s family spent the first three days after they lost their house in a flimsy hut cobbled together with a few pieces of wood. Then made a tent of tarpaulin, where they moved together with goats, their most valuable asset. Livestock, the old man explains, must not be left outside at night because it could fall prey to tigers or leopards.

After one week, Chiute borrowed some money, bought materials and with the help of his neighbours put a house together for himself, his wife, their youngest daughter and her husband.

It has a simple design – a one-room cabin made of a wooden skeleton encased in corrugated iron, the floor covered with oilcloth, and equipped with simple beds, cupboards and a gas cooker.

”Even if this collapses,” says Chiute ironically, “at the worst, the corrugated sheet would pin us down, not stones.”

Construction took two weeks, because the wood had to be brought from a distance. When the house was already standing, the government finally sent some relief – any Nepalese family who lost a house is entitled to a 15,000 rupee (150 dollars) loan. Chiute could pay off half the loan.

Another Ramche resident, 29-year-old Deepak Bhutel, received 180,000 rupees but he had been less fortunate – his wife and 18-month-old daughter lost their lives under the rubble of their stone house.

The amount would be enough to buy a sturdy house, certain to survive any future earthquake but Deepak, together with his older and now only daughter, says he is also going to end up in a corrugated iron-clad cabin. Having lived from hand to mouth all his life, he says he does not want to spend all his wealth on the house.

Only time will tell if, in the process of planning reconstruction, the government of Nepal will use an opportunity to find out why the Tamangs are so vulnerable to natural disasters and what can be done to protect them from future calamities.

Past mistakes should not be repeated, warned Jagdish Chandra Pokhrel, former Vice Chair of National Planning Commission, quoted by ‘Nepali Times’.

Pokhrel recalled the example of the Tamangs displaced when the reservoir in Makwanpur was built in the early 1980s. Around 500 families whose lands were acquired by the authorities did not want cash compensation but resettlement elsewhere.

“But the government gave them money anyway, and very few bought land with that,” said Pokhrel. “Soon, the money was gone and they were destitute.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Muslim women were the first to venture back to their homes following deadly riots in southwest Sri Lanka on Jun. 15, 2014. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO/ALUTHGAMA, Jun 19 2014 (IPS)

The signs had been clear for months; beneath the veneer of normalcy in Sri Lanka’s southwestern coastal town of Aluthgama, religious tensions were brewing, but no one was sure how or when they would erupt.

A little over a month ago the cauldron simmered over when a mob attacked a Muslim-owned shop in this town, 60 km south of the capital Colombo, after the owner’s brother was arrested for sexually molesting a minor from the majority Sinhala community.

Barely a month later, on Jun. 12, hostilities flared again when crowds of angry people surrounded the local police station following an altercation involving a Buddhist monk and some Muslim residents.

When officials in Colombo and Aluthgama heard that the hard-line group Bodu Bala Sena – loosely translated as Buddhist Force and referred to simply as the BBS – was planning a meeting on Jun. 15 in Aluthgama, they sounded the alarm.

“When you see your house burnt down, your life destroyed in flames, it is very difficult to regain the trust in those you expect to protect you." -- Iqbal Asgar, a Muslim resident of Dharga Town
Faiszer Musthapha, a deputy minister in the government of the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), urged the inspector general of police to increase security in the area for fear the rally could turn sour.

According to a letter penned by the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama, the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, the Wakf Board of Sri Lanka, the All Ceylon YMMA and the Colombo Masjid Federation, “This is a dangerous situation that could develop into a major riot.”

The warning fell on deaf ears.

On Jun. 15, the meeting went ahead as planned and shortly thereafter, trouble began in the nearby Muslim enclave of Dharga Town. Some of the participants in the BBS rally traveled through the town in a convoy and the first clashes erupted near the town’s mosque where local residents had gathered.

By dusk the police had declared a curfew, but by then the rampaging mob could not be contained. Sporadic violence continued for the next three days in Aluthgama, with smaller incidents reported in the neighbouring town of Beruwela, leaving eight dead, according to residents, though police said only two fatalities had been reported. Locals also told IPS an additional 80 people were wounded in the brawls.

With homes and business premises going up in flames before their eyes, families were forced to take shelter in school buildings, where women huddled in overcrowded classrooms with their children while the men stood guard outside, fearful that the Buddhist mobs would return at any minute.

While the tragedy in Aluthgama is not the first example of post-war communal riots in the country, it has certainly been the worst, representing the first riot-related deaths since Sri Lanka declared an end to its ethnic conflict in 2009.

Previous incidents involving the BBS include the attack on a Muslim-owned clothing store on the outskirts of Colombo on May 13 last year and the storming of a press conference held by a group of Buddhist and Muslim leaders on Apr. 11 this year.

When the BBS rose to prominence in early 2013 its leaders said their aim was to help Buddhism regain its ‘rightful place’ in Sri Lanka.

Although officially constituted on May 7, 2012, the group did not release its 10-point declaration until February 2013, spelling out such demands as an end to Halal certification for certain food items, suspension of the scheme which allows Sinhalese women to work in the Middle East, and a full ban on birth control.

Speakers at BBS rallies have repeatedly claimed that so-called ‘Muslim extremism’ is the biggest threat facing Buddhists in a country where Muslims constitute 10 percent of the population of some 20 million.

Leaders of the movement claim they enjoy close ties with the government, but the state has denied official links with the group.

Rubble replaces communal harmony

As Muslim residents nervously make their way back to the scene of the furore, rights groups and concerned citizens are raising questions about the government’s lax reaction to the violence and the tensions that precipitated it.

From the G77 summit in Bolivia, President Mahinda Rajapaksa tweeted the following message immediately after being notified about the attacks:

The Government will not allow anyone to take the law into their own hands. I urge all parties concerned to act in restraint. -MR (1/2)

— Mahinda Rajapaksa (@PresRajapaksa) June 15, 2014

Back in Colombo on Jun. 18 he visited the troubled areas and promised an impartial probe into the incident.

But civil society leaders, as well as top officials in the Rajapakse government, want more assertive action from the government to stem communal violence once and for all.

According to Justice Minister Rauf Hakeem, “The law-and-order machinery completely failed.”

“For 72 hours, we begged the government to prevent this rally from taking place on Sunday for fear of riots […],” said the minister, who is also the head of Sri Lanka’s largest Muslim political party, the Muslim Congress, adding, “I am ashamed. I couldn’t protect my people.”

Under tremendous pressure, police arrested close to 50 people Monday night in connection with the violence, 30 of who have been remanded in police custody according to Police Spokesman and Superintendent Ajith Rohana.

Those who were caught in the violence told IPS that if the authorities had acted swiftly, the mayhem could have been avoided.

Eyewitnesses say that BBS members who entered Dharga Town encountered the police as they neared the mosque, but it didn’t slow them down.

“The police were either overwhelmed, or scared, but for whatever reason they did not take any action to prevent the clashes. If they had, lives would not have been lost,” Iqbal Asgar, a resident who fled the violence, asserted.

He said that most of the Muslim properties in the town had been torched, including at least one car dealership and one small factory. Residents told IPS that the losses could run into millions of rupees (thousands of dollars).

Even three days after the riots, tension was still palpable in the town, with plumes of smoke rising from the remnants of charred buildings. Anger among the victims, left helpless in the face of the carnage, hung thick in the air.

Muslim women were the first to venture back to the outskirts of Dharga to examine what was left of their properties. Those who lived closer to the town centre were too terrified to return – as were most of the men, who remained in the safety of the schools where the families initially sought shelter.

They have good reason to be afraid. Even after the army swept through the town in a bid to clear it of extremist elements, Asgar said the displaced heard rumors that the mobs were still at large, and had even attacked a vehicle carrying food aid for those affected.

In the absence of state sponsored relief immediately after the riots, religious and community groups, including Buddhist organisations, mobilised to gather and deliver dry rations, clothes and baby food to the affected population as early as Jun. 16.

Still, it will take sustained effort to repair the sacred bond of communal trust and harmony that now lies in ashes in the southwest of Sri Lanka.

“When you see your house burnt down, your life destroyed in flames, it is very difficult to regain the trust in those you expect to protect you,” Asgar told IPS.

According to Jehan Perera, who heads the advocacy body known as the National Peace Council, the government must publicly say that all minorities including Muslims are full citizens of the country, take legal action against the perpetrators of the riots and pay compensation for those who have lost loved ones and property.

“Failure to do so,” he told IPS, “would be an abdication of responsibility.”

President Rajapaksa has pledged to rebuild all damaged property with state support; it remains to be seen whether the promise will be honoured in the weeks and months to come.

(END)

Border guards in Bangladesh refuse entry to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in November 2012. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS.

By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE, Feb 20 2014 (IPS)

Two Myanmar Buddhist politicians who were visiting Malaysia narrowly escaped a late night assassination attempt outside a leading shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur this month. The incident has raised fears of an overseas spillover of the religious violence that has engulfed their state of Rakhine in recent years.

Aye Maung and Aye Thar Aung are leaders of the Arakan National Party (ANP), representing the mostly Buddhist Rakhines, the largest ethnic group in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, which was known as Arakan during British colonial times. Gunmen riding a motorcycle fired a number of shots at a car carrying them and their companions in a busy shopping area of the Malaysian capital, but no one was injured, according to eyewitness reports.“We have set up a committee of inquiry with Buddhists, Muslims and persons of no religious affiliation to look at the issue and determine what is really happening and provide some solutions." -- Dr Chandra Muzaffar

The Buddhist leaders returned to Myanmar a day after the incident. Aye Maung told a news conference that it was a well-planned terrorist attack. “I strongly believe the attack was a planned assassination attempt on our lives,” he claimed. “Our internal disturbances have now reached overseas, and we can now firmly conclude from this incident that the terrorists are now well established in foreign countries, especially in Malaysia.”

Some Muslim groups in Malaysia, however, claim that the ANP has staged the drama in order to gain the sympathy of Buddhists in Myanmar ahead of the general election there in 2015.

Rakhine state has witnessed several episodes of violence since 2012 between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, leaving scores dead and displaced. Many of the victims were from the Rohingya Muslim minority, considered by most Myanmar Buddhists as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

Thousands of Rohingyas have fled to Muslim-majority Malaysia, where about 250,000 Myanmar nationals – both Buddhists and Muslims – are believed to reside, with many employed in low-paying jobs at restaurants and construction sites.

The Malaysian police have been quick to blame Myanmar migrants for the shooting incident.

But Malaysian political analyst Dr Chandra Muzaffar, head of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), said a lot of Muslims in the region have been unhappy with the way Rohingyas are being treated inside Myanmar.

“Certain groups must be reacting because of certain perceptions of these politicians,” he told IPS from Kuala Lumpur. “Police need to investigate thoroughly to find out who was behind this.”

Kuala Lumpur’s acting investigations chief Khairi Ahrasa said in a media statement that a special squad, headed by him, has been set up to investigate the case “which has elements of political involvement.”

He also said they are investigating whether the killing of a Myanmar national, Ko Aung Gyi, in the city a day later has any connection with the shooting incident.

Ko Aung Gyi, a member of the 88 Generation Students group who hailed from Rakhine, was killed soon after his meeting with the Rakhine delegation. The former student leader turned political activist from Rakhine had been living in Malaysia with his family for several years. According to his wife, Ma Su Su Myint, he was killed after being called to discuss a business matter.

There have been a number of killings within the Myanmar migrant community in Malaysia in the past year. In late May 2013, violence in the community in Kuala Lumpur left at least two people dead, and was widely linked to the Rakhine state’s troubles. Earlier that month, Indonesian police arrested four men who were later found guilty of attempting to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta. The bomb plot’s mastermind said the conspirators were trying to avenge the killings of their Muslim brethren in Myanmar.

JUST has been concerned about the escalating tension between Muslims and Buddhists in the region and in November organised an inter-faith dialogue in Kuala Lumpur attended by Buddhists from across Asia and Muslims from Malaysia and Indonesia.

“We have set up a committee of inquiry with Buddhists, Muslims and persons of no religious affiliation to look at the issue and determine what is really happening and provide some solutions,” Muzaffar told IPS.

The six-member delegation of ANP leaders that was visiting Malaysia when the attack took place was basically the core political leadership of Buddhists in the Rakhine state. They were in Malaysia to meet exiled Myanmar Buddhists, collect donations and drum up support for their campaigns.

They were also believed to have held a town hall-style public talk and discussion titled “Reform in Burma and Arakan Politics” in Kuala Lumpur, according to a blog by Myanmar exile Hla Oo, who says Aye Maung is “bitterly hated” by Rohingya Muslims.

Aye Maung’s Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) and the Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) – originally two rival groups – formally agreed to merge and form ANP (Arakan National Party) in October 2013, thus making it a formidable force in the state ahead of the 2015 general elections.

RNDP’s former stronghold was northern Rakhine while ALD’s bases were in southern Rakhine. ALD won 11 out of 26 seats in Rakhine in the 1990 general elections. ALD didn’t participate in the 2010 elections but RNDP participated and won 16 seats in Rakhine.

The ANP leadership applied for official registration to Myanmar’s Union Election Commission on Oct. 15 last year, but their application was only granted on Jan. 13 this year.

Muzaffar believes that the Myanmar government is not doing enough to stop the violence in the state and the military may be trying to use Buddhist nationalism to perpetuate military rule beyond the 2015 elections.

Referring to the Association of South East Asian Nations grouping of which Myanmar is a member, he said, “Other ASEAN governments can’t do anything to stop this, but they can get a dialogue going under the ASEAN charter of 2007.

“The international community could also help…but the problem is all are hoping to get a big slice of the Myanmar pie and western governments don’t want to antagonise the Myanmar government.”

Rendered the nowhere people in their own homeland, thousands of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are fleeing inhuman living conditions, lack of humanitarian aid and rising sectarian tensions in their country. And the very state that is supposed to protect them now stands accused of ‘ethnic cleansing’.

The Muslim Rohingyas and Rakhine Buddhists have had a history of conflict dating back to World War II. The latest round, however, was ignited in June 2012 when 10 Rohingya Muslims were killed by ethnic Arakanese, following the rape of a 28-year-old Arakanese woman. It sparked off a cycle of violence in which an estimated 200 non-Rohingya Muslims, Rohingya and ethnic Arakanese have been killed and more than 125,000 displaced.

The horror peaked in October last year when security forces assisted ethnic Arakanese in razing villages in nine of the 21 townships in Arakan, in western Myanmar or Burma. The Rohingyas were disarmed of the sticks they were carrying to defend themselves. At least 70 of them were reportedly killed, including 28 children, nearly half of them under the age of five.

“Since the state-sponsored pogrom against the Rohingya started in June 2012,” says student, activist and Rohingya blogger team member Mohammed Sheikh Anwar, “their living conditions have deteriorated. Access to humanitarian assistance such as food and medicines has been blocked, their properties are looted and vandalised on a daily basis.

“In addition, the internally displaced Rohingya and Kamans have no shelter, clean water or clothing. Many are suffering from pneumonia, diarrhoea and other infectious diseases. Women and under-aged girls are subjected to rape at the hands of security officials, the men have to face inhuman torture in secret jails.”

This plight of the Rohingyas was the subject of a 153-page report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch last week. Titled ‘All You Can Do is Pray’, it accuses the Myanmar authorities of ‘ethnic cleansing’ by failing to prevent the violence, conducting mass detentions and blocking humanitarian aid.

So desperate is their situation that it has sparked off an exodus where more than 13,000 of them – according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) – have fled Myanmar by sea in overcrowded dinghy boats.

They are headed mostly to Thailand, but if they have been hoping for refuge here, the country is not extending it. Instead, in a bid to protect its own shores, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra called on Myanmar President Thein Sein to assist in the repatriation of the more than 1,000 detained Rohingya in Thailand.

Confirming Thailand’s unwillingness to take in the Rohingyas, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of HRW told IPS, “Thailand absolutely refuses to let the Rohingya have access to the UNHCR to file a claim for refugee status. In fact, Thailand has a special policy created by the National Security Council, which sees the Rohingya as a national security threat to Thailand.”

“UNHCR and other human rights organisations need to come forward and rescue these individuals fleeing persecution,” says Anwar. “If the Thai authorities send them back to Myanmar, they could be killed or imprisoned.”

There are an estimated 800,000 stateless Rohingya in western Burma’s Arakan state, which borders Bangladesh. “History tells us that in the early 1950s a few Bengali Muslim intellectuals of the northwestern part of Arakan began to use the term ‘Rohingya’ to identify themselves,” says historian Aye Chan of Kanda University of International Studies in Japan and author of ‘The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma’.

“They were, in fact, direct descendants of immigrants from the Chittagong district of East Bengal, who had migrated into Arakan after the province was ceded to British India under the terms of the Treaty of Yandabo. Most of these migrants settled down in the Mayu Frontier Area, near what is now Burma’s border with modern Bangladesh. Actually, they were called ‘Chittagonians’ in British colonial records.”

Arakan saw a great deal of bloodshed during World War II and after 1948, at the beginning of Burma’s independence, Chan goes on to say. “One of the underlying causes was the zamindari system, under which the British administrators granted Bengali landowners thousands of acres of arable land on 90-year leases. The Arakanese peasants who had fled Burmese rule and returned after British annexation found themselves deprived of their inherited land.”

Things only got worse after the British left. “Some people in the Mayu Frontier, who are now in their 70s and 80s, still remember the atrocities they suffered in 1942-1943 during the short period of anarchy between the British evacuation and Japanese occupation of the area,” says Chan. There was an outburst of ethnic and religious tensions that had been simmering for a century.”

Most Burmese still consider the Rohingya illegal Bengali immigrants. A 1974 Emergency Immigration Act, initiated by former dictator General Ne Win, stripped Rohingya of their Burmese nationality. Further, under Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, Rohingya are not considered part of the country’s 135 ethnic groups unless they can prove their ancestors lived in Myanmar before independence from Britain in 1948. Although some Rohingya carry temporary registration cards, many lack documentation.

“Rohingyas, as is well known, have been persecuted by different regimes in Myanmar due to their ethnic origin and religion,” says Anwar. “As their situation stands today, it will not be an exaggeration to say that they are one of the most discriminated, oppressed and persecuted people in the world.”

Policemen guard a Buddhist monastery in Dhaka following sectarian violence in Cox's Bazar. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

By Farid Ahmed
DHAKA, Oct 10 2012 (IPS)

Anxiety has yet to die down over a week after crowds of Muslims torched more than a dozen temples and scores of houses in southeast Bangladesh, leaving thousands of Buddhists with the unshakeable premonition that more violence was forthcoming.

The government has repeatedly tried to assure the religious minority that they have the support and protection of the state, while the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Mizanur Rahman, apologised for the atrocities – but it seems nothing can assuage the fear of fresh violence.

“We’re shocked by this unexpected violence… yet we appeal to all to maintain peace as Buddhism preaches peace and non-violence,” Dr. Pranab Kumar Baruya, a former visiting professor of Dhaka University, told IPS during an interview at the Dharma Rajika Buddhist Monastery in Dhaka.

“We want communal harmony. We number only one million (in Bangladesh) and we need the support of the government and the majority of the people in a country where we’ve also been born and where Buddhism has been practiced for more than a thousand years,” he added.

Amid mounting pressure on the government to launch a judicial inquiry into the attacks, the country’s top business leaders have expressed anxieties that a recurrence of such incidents might have a negative impact on the country’s image, investment and international trade.

The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry asked the government on Thursday to take immediate measures to ensure “such unexpected incidents do not take place (again).”

“A sense of fear still persists among the Buddhist people and it’s the responsibility of the government to allay the fear by providing proper security and bringing the culprits to justice,” Ranjit Kumar Barua, a retired joint-secretary to the government of Bangladesh, told IPS.

Ancient relics destroyed

The riot began on Sept. 29, when large crowds of Muslims attacked Buddhist shrines and torched homes in southeast Bangladesh, home to the highest concentration of Buddhists in the country.

Protesters chanted anti-Buddhist slogans and rioted throughout the night in the town of Ramu in the tourist district of Cox’s Bazar. Violence spilled into the adjoining areas and continued the following day.

The local administration had to call in the army, paramilitary troops from Border Guards Bangladesh and police forces to maintain law and order.

According to Baruya, ancient Buddhist relics, along with rare palm-leaf manuscripts of folk and religious tales (locally known as Puthis) were burned and several hundred rare statues of Lord Buddha were either damaged or looted by the mobs.

“Almost all the temples and monasteries, adorned intricately with wood carvings, were burned and damaged. They were several hundred years old; some of them were built in the late 17^th or early 18^th centuries,” he said.

Pragyananda Bhikkhu, resident director of the Ramu Central Sima Bihar in Cox’s Bazar, told IPS, “The damage done is irreparable and no one on earth will be able to compensate for this loss. The wounds might heal but they will continue to bleed deep in our hearts.”

“The temples belonged to the Buddhists, but they were also priceless treasures of our country (as a whole), they were part of our heritage,” Nehal Ahmed, a college professor in Dhaka, told IPS.

Police and witnesses told IPS that a photograph of a partially burned Quran, allegedly posted on Facebook by a Buddhist youth, sparked the riot.

An initial report said that the boy was tagged in the photo but did not post it himself. The Facebook user’s account has since been deleted.

“This can’t be accepted in this relatively peaceful South Asian nation,” Ahmed said, referring to the recent deadly violence that swept across several countries in response to a low-budget American film, ‘Innocence of Muslim’, desecrating Prophet Mohammad.

“We’ve seen many deaths during protests in Pakistan over the anti-Islam film, but it was relatively peaceful in Bangladesh,” he said.

Political stalemate

Top political leaders, hailing from the ruling Awami League and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), have pointed accusing fingers at each other in a blame game that has further deepened the anxiety of Buddhists who comprise less than one percent of the total population in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Home Minister, Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, who visited the scene of the violence immediately after the riot, blamed the BNP for the attacks.

The minister said the violence was planned, citing evidence of gunpowder and petrol found in the burnt monasteries and houses.

Both the prime minister and the home minister also hinted that Rohingya Muslims, refugees of persection and sectarian violence in neighbouring Myanmar (formerly Burma) who fled to Cox’s Bazar two decades ago, might be responsible for instigating the attacks.

Meanwhile, Khaleda Zia, leader of the BNP and a former prime minister of Bangladesh, said on Saturday that the government itself was behind the attacks.

This week the Bangladesh Supreme Court ordered the government to ensure complete security to Buddhists and other minority groups.

Buddhist monks, primarily in Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, staged demonstrations in front of the Bangladesh missions in their respective countries, venting their anger and demanding an impartial probe into the attacks.

International rights groups and non-governmental organisations including Amnesty International also asked the government to bring the culprits to book immediately.

Many Buddhists feel that whatever the investigation unearths, horrific memories of one of the worst attacks on the Buddhist faith will remain alive.

(END)