Rohingya villagers blockaded amid fresh tensions in Myanmar’s Rakhine

YANGON: Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims have been blockaded inside their area by their Buddhist neighbours in a western Myanmar village, residents say, as religious tensions in troubled Rakhine state spread to a more ethnically mixed part of the region.

Monitors and aid workers worry that violence that has until now been largely confined to the Rohingya-majority northern part of Rakhine, bordering Bangladesh, could erupt in an area where the two communities live side- by- side in much larger numbers.

Residents, aid workers and monitors told Reuters that Muslims in the village of Zay Di Pyin had been blocked from going to work or fetching food and water for the last three weeks, although a small number had been allowed through the blockade to buy provisions on Tuesday.

Police said Rakhine Buddhist villagers were restricting the amount of food the Rohingya could buy, but denied their movement around the village and access to work had been blocked.

“I think they are just afraid and aren’t going out,” said Myanmar police headquarters spokesman Colonel Myo Thu Soe.

The government said it was working to improve security in the area.

The stand-off has raised fears of a repeat of the communal violence that broke out in the Rakhine state capital Sittwe in 2012, leading to the killing of nearly 200 people and displacement of some 140,000 - most of them Rohingya.

“The concern in Zay Di Pyin is that this could escalate into violence between the two communities,” said Chris Lewa of Arakan Project, a Rohingya monitoring group.