Thousands of Buddhist monks march in anti-Muslim protests in Myanmar’s restive Rakhine State

Myanmar’s bitterly-divided Rakhine State saw mass protests on Sunday as thousands of Buddhists, including monks, demonstrated in a show of opposition to a government edict referring to Muslim communities in the restive province, organisers said.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric has spiked across Myanmar recently, with two mosques torched by Buddhist mobs in just over a week in a country where sectarian violence has left scores dead since 2012.

Home to around one million stateless Rohingya Muslims, Rakhine State has been hardest hit by religious violence that has left tens of thousands of the persecuted minority in fetid displacement camps.

The Rohingya are reviled by Rakhine Buddhists who refuse to recognise any shared rights to the province and instead call them “Bengalis” – or illegal immigrants from nearby Bangladesh.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s new government has sought to defuse the row over the term Rohingya instead ordering officials to refer to “Muslim communities in Rakhine”.