Bangladesh sent in troops to guard Buddhist neighborhoods on Monday after Muslim mobs carried out fresh attacks on temples and homes over a Facebook photo deemed offensive to Islam.
At least six temples were attacked in different neighborhoods of the resort region of Cox’s Bazaar on late Sunday, with thousands of protesters smashing statues of Lord Buddha before riot police used force to repel the crowds.
The weekend violence was sparked by claims that a young Buddhist man had posted a photo allegedly defaming the Koran on Facebook.
“We shot rubber bullets to disperse the crowd,” said Faruk Ahmed, deputy police chief for the southeastern region.
Police said that 107 people had been arrested in connection with the violence on Saturday and Sunday night.
“This was an organised attack. We won’t spare anyone who is found to have played a role,” said Ahmed.
At least five homes were torched in the overnight violence which came after a 25,000-strong mob ran riot in Ramu, a village in the district of Cox’s Bazaar, on Saturday night, smashing temples and setting fire to dozens of homes.
The riots later spread to Patia, home to a sizable Buddhist population outside the southeastern port city of Chittagong, where mobs attacked and vandalized four temples.
Ahmed said soldiers were now patrolling Buddhist neighborhoods and temples in Cox’s Bazaar to prevent a further outbreak of violence.
“The army and BGB (border guards) have been deployed in the trouble spots,” he told AFP. “The situation is calm but tense.”
A senior army officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said around 1,000 troops had been deployed to Cox’s Bazaar, including 300 in Ramu.
“We have secured the temples and Buddhist areas. Our teams have set up tents for the people whose houses were burnt,” he told AFP.
“We have adequate forces. Things are getting back to normal.”
The man at the center of the accusations has gone into hiding after telling local media he did not post the picture on the social media site, insisting someone else had “tagged” the image on his Facebook account.
His mother and an aunt have been given police protection for their safety after the violence broke out, officials said.
Bangladesh’s interior minister Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir visited Ramu on Sunday, assuring the Buddhist community that the attacks would be thoroughly investigated and they would receive compensation to rebuild their temples and homes.
He said the attacks appeared to be “premeditated and a deliberate act of communal violence”.
A team of investigators, comprising government bureaucrats and police officials, began its work on Monday.
Sunil Barua, a journalist who lives in a Buddhist neighborhood in Ramu, said two of the temples attacked over the weekend were 300 years old.
“They looted Buddha statues from the temples, and shops owned by Buddhists were also looted,” he told AFP by phone.
“The villages look like as if they were hit by a major cyclone.”
Buddhists, who make up less than one percent of Bangladesh’s 153 million population, are based mainly in southeastern districts, close to the border with Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Sectarian tensions have been running high since June when deadly clashes erupted between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state.
Although Bangladesh, where nearly 90 percent of people are Muslims, has witnessed violent conflicts between Muslims and Hindus in the past, sectarian clashes involving Buddhists are rare.
In recent weeks tens of thousands of Muslims have hit the streets across the country to protest against a US-made anti-Islam film mocking the Prophet Mohammed.
