About 1,200 people have been detained over the past year under suspicion of involvement in communal violence in the Rakhine State, Col. Htein Lin, the Security and Border Affairs Minister for Rakhine State, told Mizzima on July 9.
However, authorities claim they have not discovered any mastermind behind the violence, but did not rule out the possibility that an influential person or group could have orchestrated the mobs.
Speaking in front of the Rakhine State government, UN organizations and social organizations at the Foreign Ministry in Yangon, Col. Htein Lin said the detained suspects were arrested in connection with 275 crimes, and that more than 500 suspects had already been sentenced.
Conflict between Muslims and Buddhists erupted in Rakhine State a year ago, leaving scores of people dead and some 140,000 evacuated from their homes into temporary shelters.
Hla Thein, the Rakhine State attorney-general and chairman for Rakhine State Government's Information and Records Committee, said, “We do not have evidence for all these cases, so many of them were dropped.”
