U Kyi San has been ordering village administration officials in Maungdaw Township to inform him any time homes are rebuilt or repaired in their villages, said Hamid.

Even though some Rohingyas obtained permission from Maungdaw Township’s municipal office to rebuild their homes, U Kyi San ordered some of them to be destroyed if the home-owners refused to pay him extortion money, according to Ahmed from Maungdaw Township’s Block No. 5.

“Abu Jamail obtained permission from the municipal office and thus legally rebuilt his home, but U Kyi San sent the police force to destroy the house on June 17th in the evening.”

Some Rohingyas have paid extortion money in order to keep their houses from being destroyed, giving 500,000 kyat each to U Kyi San, said an officer from the Maungdaw Township office who declined to be named.

One Rohingya from Myoma Khayoungdan Village, Abul Kalam, gave U Kyi San 400,000 kyat just to build balconies for his houses, while another Rohingya villager from Kyauk Hlai Khar Village paid 70,000,000 kyat to protect the 35 shops which he owns (200,000 kyat per shop), the officer said.

According to an elder villager in the area, U Kyi San also prevented a wedding ceremony from taking place even though the bride’s father, Mr. Abul Kalam, had received permission from Maungdaw Township’s municipal office to hold the ceremony. The villager said that U Kyi San sent security forces to prevent the wedding organizers from preparing and serving food to the guests, so the ceremony had to proceed without any guests or food.

Given that Abul Kalam had obtained official permission to hold the ceremony, the elder villager was quite disturbed and said, “If they had paid thousands of kyat to U Kyi San, the wedding ceremony would have taken place happily and all the people would have joined the ceremony. This only happens to Rohingyas, not Rakhine people.”