Arrests follow scuffles in Muslim-dominated areas in Yangon and forcible closures of two Islamic schools by Buddhists.

Myanmar’s outspoken Buddhist nationalists have long railed against the Rohingya [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Myanmar police have arrested two hardline Buddhist nationalists and are seeking several more after they clashed with Muslims in the country’s commercial capital Yangon, underscoring the authorities’ growing concern over rising religious tensions.

The arrests came after nationalists led by the Patriotic Monks Union (PMU) raided flats on Tuesday in a Yangon district with a large Muslim population, igniting scuffles that were only broken up when police fired shots into the air.

Two weeks ago, the same people had forced the closure of two Muslim schools.

“We have arrested two people since yesterday evening, and are still looking for the rest of them,” said Police Major Khin Maung Oo, in charge the police station in Yangon’s Mingalar Taung Nyunt district, where this week’s clashes took place.

The 13-month-old administration of Aung San Suu Kyi had made tentative moves against nationalist hardliners, but the arrests mark a significant step-up in the government’s efforts, highlighting official concerns over a potential outbreak of violence in the country’s main city, which has a substantial Muslim population.

Tensions between majority Buddhists and Myanmar’s Muslim minority have simmered since scores were killed and tens of thousands displaced in intercommunal clashes accompanying the onset of the country’s democratic transition in 2012 and 2013.

Mutual distrust has deepened since October, when attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents in northwestern Rakhine state provoked a massive military counter-offensive, causing about 75,000 Rohingya to flee across the border to Bangladesh.

Brigadier-General Mya Win, the commander of Yangon’s regional police security command, said extra security forces had been deployed and the police were on high alert to prevent communal violence.

“We are patrolling around Muslim areas and have taken security measures around places of worship,” he told Reuters news agency.

Leaders of the PMU said they were acting independently of the Ma Ba Tha, a larger hardline Buddhist and anti-Muslim organisation that counts among its leaders the firebrand monk Wirathu, who once called himself “Myanmar’s Bin Laden.”

Ma Ba Tha holds its nationwide congress in Yangon – a city of more than five million that has been a focus of foreign investment since a former military government ceded power in 2012 – in two weeks and is expecting about 10,000 monks to attend.

Targeting Muslims

In both incidents, PMU monks and lay sympathisers targeted Muslim areas after attending a trial of fellow nationalists facing charges of inciting violence during a protest in front of the United States embassy in Yangon last year.

“We didn’t want any confrontation with the nationalists so we allowed them to shut down our schools,” said Tin Shwe, the chairman of the Muslim schools, referring to an incident on April 28.

Tin Shwe, and a lawmaker from the ruling National League for Democracy, said the nationalists came to the schools with local administrators and policemen.

On Tuesday the group – again accompanied by local authorities and police – searched a building in a different part of Yangon shortly before midnight, claiming some Rohingya Muslims were staying there illegally.

Local residents confronted the nationalists, gathered in front of the building, prompting police officers to fire warning shots to break up the crowd.

A Yangon court issued the arrest warrant against seven people, including two monks, charging them with inciting communal violence, which carries a penalty of up to two years in prison.

At a news conference on Tuesday, organised shortly before the arrest warrants were issued, the nationalists vowed to keep fighting Muslim influence in the country, citing government reluctance to “protect race and religion” in Myanmar.

“We are protecting our people because government authorities are reluctant to do that. Even though many people hate us, we are not creating problems,” U Thuseikta, a monk and a senior official of the PMU, told reporters.

Tin Shwe, the Muslim community leader, said: “We want to get equal treatment and be protected by the government – we voted for them with our hands.”

CAIR finds 57 percent increase in anti-Islam bias incidents in US including hate crimes, harassment and discrimination.

CAIR said the acceleration in bias incidents was due in part to Trump’s anti-Muslim comments [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

The number of anti-Islam bias incidents in the United States saw a dramatic rise last year, according to a Muslim advocacy group.

A report published by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Tuesday found 2,213 such incidents in 2016, a 57 percent increase from 2015. Incidents increased 5 percent from 2014 to 2015.

“The report simply punctuates what we already knew: that prejudice in America has seen a resurgence in the last couple of years,” said Corey Saylor, director of the Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia at CAIR and the primary author of the report.

While the group had been seeing a rise in anti-Muslim incidents before Donald Trump’s rise in last year’s presidential primaries and November election victory, it said the acceleration in bias incidents was due in part to Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and focus on armed groups such as ISIL.

CAIR’s accounting includes a wide variety of bias incidents, from assaults and street harassment, to employment discrimination, to what the group considers inappropriate targeting or questioning by the FBI.

One case study mentioned was an incident in California, in which hundreds of letters inciting mass violence were left on the windshields of cars parked in Midtown, Sacramento, with a message to “kidnap, rob, torture for information, and execute all Muslims and Latinos. Leave no survivors.”

The report details a rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes to 260 in 2016, up 44 percent from 180 a year earlier.

That includes all crimes recorded where CAIR saw evidence of anti-Muslim bias, not just those where hate crime charges were brought, Saylor said.

Examples mentioned in the report include a case from Kansas, where federal authorities charged three militia members for conspiring to bomb a mosque.

In Texas, a Muslim-owned restaurant was vandalised with bacon twice in one week.

Incidents directed at mosques in 2016 include arson at the The Islamic Centre of Fort Pierce in Florida, in which the mosque was severely damaged.

In Oklahama, a pig carcass was dropped off in the parking lot of the the Islamic Centre of Lawton.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to create a register and special ID cards for Muslims, and he made statements such as “Islam hates us”.

After taking office, he attempted to ban immigrants and refugees from seven, then, after a revision, six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. The measure was blocked by federal judges but the Trump administration is arguing in ongoing court proceedings that the ban was necessary for national security.

CAIR said other candidates for the US presidency also contributed to an anti-Muslim narrative.

For example, Ben Carson, now housing secretary, said Islam is not consistent with the US constitution, and that Muslims could embrace American democracy “only if they’re schizophrenic”.

Warnings by two UN agencies as a third county is reported to be on the brink of famine that has impacted 100,000 people.

Famine and war have created a huge humanitarian crisis [Goran Tomasevic/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

The civil war in South Sudan has forced more than two million children to flee their homes, according to two UN agencies.

Children make up 62 percent of the more than 1.8 million South Sudanese refugees who have arrived mainly in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan, say the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, and the refugee agency, UNHCR.

More than a million children have, meanwhile, been internally displaced.

“No refugee crisis today worries me more than South Sudan,” said Valentin Tapsoba, Africa director for UNHCR.

“That refugee children are becoming the defining face of this emergency is incredibly troubling.”

South Sudan has been riven by a civil conflict since a split between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar, escalated in December 2013.

Tens of thousands have been killed and 3.5 million displaced.

About 100,000 people are facing a famine and a million are on the brink of famine.

The UN announcements came on the same day that a monitoring group warned a third South Sudanese county is at risk of famine.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network said starvation is likely to occur in Koch county.

Famine already has been declared in the counties of Leer and Mayendit, with a million people said to be at risk.

The new report says famine is likely to spread during the lean season for farmers from July to September. It says that without humanitarian aid, famine could be declared in even more areas.

The African nation’s civil war, now in its fourth year, has blocked aid to some regions.

The combination of fighting and famine in the world’s youngest country has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

Last month, the US condemned Kiir for the state’s “man-made” famine and ongoing conflict, urging him to fulfil a month-old pledge of a unilateral truce by ordering his troops back to their barracks.

“We must see a sign that progress is possible,” Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, told a Security Council briefing on South Sudan on Tuesday.

“We must see that ceasefire implemented.”

Visiting Japan as part of trip to reassure allies, US vice president promises ‘overwhelming and effective response’.

by Al Jazeera

The US will counter any North Korean attack with an “overwhelming and effective” response, Vice President Mike Pence has said.

He sounded the warning on Wednesday from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, docked in Yokosuka, Japan.

Pence is in the region to reassure US allies unnerved by North Korea’s ongoing missile programme, and its apparent readiness to carry out another banned nuclear test in its quest to develop an atomic weapon that can hit the US mainland.

Pence, whose Asia visit started in South Korea on Sunday, just hours after the reportedly failed launch by North Korea of what analysts said could have been a new missile, said the threat from North Korea was growing.

“North Korea is the most dangerous and urgent threat to peace and security in the Asia-Pacific,” he told the audience of American and Japanese military personnel.

He pledged to “defeat any attack and meet any use of conventional or nuclear weapons with an overwhelming and effective American response”.

Pence’s comments come after a warning by a senior North Korean official that his government plans weekly tests and an “all-out war” if the US takes any action against it, and has no intention of going slow on its missile programme.

In an exclusive interview to Al Jazeera on Monday, Sin Hong-chol, North Korea’s deputy foreign minister, said: “The time of dictating orders by brandishing the US military might has gone.

“If those businessmen in power in the US thought of intimidating us by any military or sanction threats – as the [Barack] Obama administration used to do and failed – they will soon find out such threats are useless.

“If we notice any sign of assault on our sovereignty, our army will launch merciless military strikes against the US aggressors, wherever they may exist, from the remote US lands to the American military bases on the Korean Peninsula, such as those of Japan and elsewhere.”

That kind of rhetoric has unnerved allies in Japan and South Korea. Seoul, the South Korean capital, is within easy range of North Korean long-range artillery.

Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay, reporting from Tokyo, said North Korea is dominating Pence’s visit in Japan, although he is also holding economic and trade talks with Japanese officials.

“I think this is really part of an assurance campaign from Mike Pence,” he said, “because there was a lot of concern – not just in Japan but around the Asia-Pacific region – when Donald Trump won the election in the United States that his ‘America First’ policy would undo a lot of the work done by his predecessor Barack Obama and his ‘pivot to Asia’.

“This visit is really about giving some assurances to governments and also to those in the business world, that the United States is not going to turn its back on this region, it’s not going to turn its back on Japan – either economically or militarily.”

Aircraft carrier confusion

The diplomatic developments come amid much confusion surrounding the path of the USS Carl Vinson.

The US navy has said another aircraft carrier intended as a show of force to North Korea will arrive in the Sea of Japan next week.

The navy had said on April 8 that it was directing a naval strike group headed by the Vinson to “sail north,” as a “prudent measure” to deter North Korea.

And on April 11, Jim Mattis, the Pentagon chief, said the Vinson was “on her way up” to the peninsula.

The next day President Donald Trump said: “We are sending an armada. Very powerful.”

But at the time of the announcements, the ships had temporarily headed in the opposite direction, to the Indian Ocean, for military exercises with Australia.

Al Jazeera’s Craig Leeson, reporting from Seoul on Wednesday, said the fleet was thousands of miles away from the Korean Peninsula during North Korea’s recent missile test and is still several days’ travel from there.

“It certainly brings into question the US bluff about its ability to strike North Korea at that particular time, and I am sure its allies are wondering now about the credibility of the US saying that it has South Korea’s back 100 percent,” he said.

In his remarks in Japan on Wednesday, Pence also issued a warning to China regarding the South China Sea, where it has built reefs and islets into fortified islands capable of hosting military assets to bolster its claim to sovereignty over the sea.

“Our treaty [with Japan] covers all the territory administered by Japan, including the Senkaku Islands,” he said, referring to an archipelago in the East China Sea that is controlled by Japan but claimed by China.

Freedom of navigation

Pence said the US would defend the right to freedom of navigation through the waterway, one of the most important shipping channels on the planet.

He also said more of the US’ most advanced military assets would be deployed to the Asia-Pacific.

Approximately 47,000 US troops are stationed in Japan and a further 28,000 in South Korea.

Third Fleet says USS Carl Vinson making its way to the Western Pacific Ocean following North Korean ‘provocations’.

The Carl Vinson strike group includes an aircraft carrier [Erik De Castro/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

The Pentagon says a group of US warships is headed to the western Pacific Ocean to provide a physical presence near the Korean Peninsula.

The strike group, called Carl Vinson, includes an aircraft carrier and will make its way from Singapore towards the Korean Peninsula.

The development comes in response to North Korea’s “reckless, irresponsible” conduct, a US navy official said, referring to recent missile tests.

“US Pacific Command ordered the Carl Vinson Strike Group north as a prudent measure to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific,” Commander Dave Benham, spokesperson at US Pacific Command, told AFP news agency.

“The number one threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilising programme of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”

In a statement late on Saturday, the US navy’s Third Fleet said the strike group had been directed to sail north, but it did not specify the destination.

The military vessels will operate in the western Pacific rather than making previously planned port visits to Australia, it said.

Deployed from San Diego to the western Pacific since January 5, the Carl Vinson strike group has participated in numerous exercises with the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force and Republic of Korea Navy, various maritime security initiatives, and routine patrol operations in the South China Sea.

The US decision comes close on the heels of a US missile strike on Syria that was widely interpreted as putting North Korea on notice over its refusal to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Missile quest

Earlier this month, North Korea tested a liquid-fuelled Scud missile which only travelled a fraction of its range.

This year North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong-un, have repeatedly indicated that an intercontinental ballistic missile test or something similar could be coming, possibly as soon as April 15, the 105th birthday of North Korea’s founding president and celebrated annually as the Day of the Sun.

North Korea is on a quest to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, and has so far staged five nuclear tests, two of them last year.

Expert satellite imagery analysis suggests it could well be preparing for a sixth, with US intelligence officials warning that North Korea could be less than two years away from developing a nuclear warhead that could reach the continental US.

Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Florida, where Trump urged his counterpart to do more to curb North Korea’s nuclear programme.

Trump’s national security aides have completed a review of US options to try to curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes.

These include economic and military measures but lean more towards sanctions and increased pressure on China to restrain North Korea.

In February the North simultaneously fired four ballistic missiles off its east coast, three of which fell provocatively close to Japan, in what it said was a drill for an attack on US bases in the neighbouring Asian country.

Last August North Korea also successfully test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile 500km towards Japan, far exceeding any previous sub-launched tests, in what Kim described as the “greatest success”.