05 July 2017•Update: 06 July 2017
By Kyaw Ye Lynn
YANGON, Myanmar
A Buddhist mob stoned a Rohingya man to death and wounded six others in the country’s western Rakhine state, the government said late Tuesday.
The seven men were attacked after leaving their displacement camp on the outskirts of state capital Sittwe to give a statement in a criminal court case.
They were accompanied by two police officers during the court visit. Later, they visited a jetty to discuss buying a fishing boat and were attacked, according to a statement from the Office of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
“At the boat jetty, an argument developed,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported. “They were attacked by several people with bricks.”
It was unclear whether the police officers were present when the attack took place.
Suu Kyi’s office said Maung Nu, 55, was killed as a mob of around 100 Rakhine Buddhists stoned the vehicle the Rohingya men were travelling in.
Two out of six injured were taken to hospital for intensive medical care, the statement added, and the remaining four were slightly injured.
The Rohingya in impoverished Rakhine have been effectively denied citizenship by a 1982 nationality law enacted by Ne Win, a military strongman who staged a coup and whose 1962-1988 leadership saw the adoption of xenophobic policies.
Thousands of them have been sheltered in refugee camps since communal violence hit Rakhine state in mid-2012.
The state is home to approximately 1.2 million Rohingya, who have long been officially labelled “Bengali” -- a term suggesting they are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh -- and denied citizenship.
