Police shoot Rakhine Buddhists who stormed government office

Seven ethnic Rakhine Buddhists died after Myanmar police opened fire on a crowd trying to seize a government office.

The incident unfurled as around 5,000 Buddhists gathered late Tuesday for a ceremony in Mrauk U, a town that has remained unscathed by the military crackdown on the minority Rohingya Muslim community.

It is not known why the gathering turned violent. The Rakhine community, many of whom are poor and marginalised, have a long-standing enmity with the Myanmar state, which is dominated by ethnic Bamar.

The clashes came on the day that a repatriation agreement was signed between Myanmar and Bangladesh to start returning about 655,000 Rohingya refugees from squalid camps across the border.

Rakhine’s Buddhists say the Rohingya are illegal “Bengali” immigrants.

A police spokesman blamed the crowd for starting the violence by throwing stones, barging into a district administrative office and hoisting the Rakhine state flag.

“Security forces asked them to disperse and fired warning shots with rubber bullets, but they didn’t stop so police had to use real bullets,” Col Myo Soe said. “Seven people were killed and 13 injured.” Col Soe said more than 20 police were wounded by the crowd, who were calling for the “sovereignty of Rakhine state”.

The Myanmar military has led a brutal crackdown against the Rohingya after militant attacks against border posts killed around a dozen police.

Rohingya say security forces, backed by hardline Rakhine mobs, torched hundreds of Rohingya villages and forced them to flee. Already shredded by communal hatreds, Rakhine state also has a Buddhist rebel group called the Arakan Army, which is fighting Myanmar’s army.

The clashes receive little attention in a state dominated by violence against the Rohingya, and in a country where several larger ethnic insurgencies are occurring.