Myanmar lynch mob mostly unjailed, says rights group

YANGON

An international rights group has warned that most members of a mob that killed ten Muslim pilgrims in Myanmar two years ago have escaped justice.

Human Rights Watch commented as seven men were jailed for the attack.

"It was clear from photographic evidence that there was an entire mob of persons involved," Phil Robertson, the organization's deputy director for Asia, told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday. "What happened to the other persons who were arrested?"

Last week Thandwe County Court in Rakhine imprisoned the killers, who local media reported as members of the Buddhist majority, to seven years each for the murders. They were part of a mob that dragged the men from a bus before beating them to death in June 2012, sparking sectarian rioting in western Rakhine state.

The mob set fire to the bus and urinated on the victims' bodies, the Democratic Voice of Burma reported at the time.

Police, who had stood by and watched the attack, originally arrested 30 people in connection with the lynching.

The attack came after Rakhine Buddhists were enraged by reports that a local Buddhist girl had been raped and murdered by Muslims.

The unrest that followed the lynching has since spread, resulting in the deaths of around 280 and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes.

The majority of the victims have been Muslims, including the Rohingya minority, who are also the target of popular hate speech led by Buddhist monks.

Rights groups have repeatedly criticized authorities for failing to bring the perpetrators of communal violence to justice.

Robertson said that authorities may have taken action after the bus attack because it "was such a clear cut case that it may be harder to cover it up, or somehow claim that it’s not clear who did it. The attack happened right in the middle of town near a police roadblock."

Chronic religious unrest has badly tarnished the reform process of President Thein Sein's quasi-civilian government, which came to power in 2011 following half a century of military rule.

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