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Myanmar: Junta Restrictions Obstruct Mosque Repair and Reconstruction
New BHRN report documents decades of restrictions on Muslim places of worship and finds that 180 Islamic religious buildings were affected by the earthquake and at least 670 Muslims were killed
Successive Myanmar governments and military regimes imposed discriminatory restrictions that obstructed Muslim communities from constructing, repairing, and renovating mosques, and the military junta has continued those restrictions after the March 2025 earthquake, the Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN) said in a report released today.
The report, "Blocked from Rebuilding: Myanmar Junta Restrictions on Mosque Repair and Reconstruction," documents 180 earthquake-affected mosques and other Islamic religious buildings across 29 townships in Mandalay Region, Sagaing Region, Naypyidaw Union Territory, Bago Region, and southern Shan State. BHRN documented at least 670 deaths among Muslims when mosques and other Islamic religious buildings collapsed during the magnitude 7.7 earthquake on March 28, 2025, when many mosques were crowded with worshippers.
"Myanmar's military and successive governments spent decades making it impossible for Muslim communities to repair and maintain their mosques," said Kyaw Win, executive director of BHRN. "Hundreds of Muslim worshippers died when mosques collapsed in the earthquake. More than a year later, many communities are still struggling to make damaged sites safe or rebuild them."
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Ma Ba Tha-linked monks target mosques and Muslim religious observances in Yangon and Mandalay.
(English / Myanmar)
LONDON, 23 September 2026 – The Myanmar military junta should immediately unseal prayer spaces at the historic Miba Zay Mosque in Mandalay and end discriminatory restrictions on Muslim worship and mosque reconstruction, the Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN) said today. Since August 2026, Buddhist nationalist monks linked to the Buddha Dhamma Charity Foundation, formerly known as Ma Ba Tha, have targeted mosques, mosque renovations, and Muslim religious observances in Yangon and Mandalay. Junta officials have subsequently ordered construction work dismantled, demolished renovation work, sealed Muslim prayer spaces, and restricted worship.
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(LONDON, June 15, 2026) The United League of Arakan (ULA) and its armed wing, the Arakan Army (AA), should immediately end the forced labor of Rohingya civilians in northern Maungdaw Township and halt the confiscation and redistribution of Rohingya-owned land to ethnic Rakhine settlers, the Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN) said today. Information gathered by BHRN's human rights researchers reveals that since the last week of May 2026, the ULA/AA has imposed forced labor demands on at least six Rohingya villages in northern Maungdaw, more than 300 people in total, to build infrastructure for new settlements it intends to establish for Rakhine communities at Sapay Kone and Maung Hna Ma, both former Rohingya villages.
The Arakan Army is seizing Rohingya land, handing it to Rakhine settlers, and forcing the dispossessed Rohingya to build the new settlements with their own hands," said Kyaw Win, Executive Director of the Burma Human Rights Network. "This is forced labour in the service of permanently erasing the Rohingya from northern Maungdaw.
