ဘနဖူး၊သိုက္တူးမယ့္နအဖ၊တကမၻာလံုးကမယံုဘူးလုိ့ေျပာေနေပမဲ့၊လုပ္ခ်င္ရာလုပ္ေနတံုးပဲ

Narinjara News
Maungdaw,13 October 2007

Muslim Community Unhappy with Maungdaw Rally

The Burmese military authority is preparing a government-backed rally to be held in Maungdaw, a western border town of Burma, on 14 October, and many people throughout the township have been ordered to attend the rally.

October 14 is also the day of Eid Mubarak, the biggest religious festival for ! Muslim communities around the world.

A Muslim elder from Maungdaw said, "We are preparing to celebrate the ceremony of Eid with near and dear relatives in Maungdaw, but now the authority ordered us to send at least one person in the family to attend the rally."

The authority recently ordered all families in Maungdaw to send at least one person to the rally, and threatened to punish any family that does not comply with the orders.

Government servants were also ordered by the authority to attend the rally along with family members. If they do not have any family members, they have to bring an ex! tra person to the rally.

The Muslim elder said, "We do not want to attend the rally during the Eid occasion, and we want to stay in our family homes peacefully during that time."

A source said the authority is preparing to hold the rally at a playground in Maungdaw on October 14, and many security forces are deploying at key places in the town to guard the rally.

Maungdaw is a Muslim dominat! ed area in Arakan State, and many in the Muslim community are facing difficulties with being forced to attend the rally during the religious festival.

The Muslim elder said that the government wants to hold the rally in Maungdaw to show the international community through neighboring Bangladesh that many religious and ethnic minorities support the current military government, despite the many demonstrations that recently broke out in Burma. #