May 5, 2017
A Rakhine mob pelted Rohingya ‘firefighters’ with stones and brickbats as they tried to put out a fire in the Aung Minglar neighbourhood in Akyab city onWednesday.
At around 9pm, three houses were gutted by fire. Locals rushed to the scene to put it out, but a Rakhine mob had already gathered at the scene which pelted the rescuers with a hail pf brickbats and stones. Three houses completely burned down in the event. The cause pof the fire is not known, but the response of the Rakhine mob has been met with constrernation by local Rohingyas.
Incidentally Aung Minglar is the only neighbourhood in the main town of the state capital where Rohingyas can live, since the riots of 2012. Akyab was once a mixed city where Rakhines had only a slim majority over the Rohingyas. But thousands of Rohingyas left after the riots, and the rest of the Muslim populace has been herded into the Aung Minglar ghetto where living conditions are dismal. The Muslims are guarded so that they cannot leave the Aing Minglar.
