DHAKA: Hundreds of Buddhists marched through the streets of Myanmar’s biggest city on Tuesday to protest an upcoming visit by a high-level delegation from the world’s biggest Islamic political bloc.

Some of those who marched in Yangon carried banners saying ‘Get out!’ and ‘Stop interfering in our internal affairs!’, reports The Straits Times.

OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and several foreign ministers from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a grouping of 57 Islamic countries, will arrive in Myanmar early on Wednesday to meet with government officials, religious leaders and members of civil society about sectarian violence that has gripped the predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million for more than a year.

More than 240 people have died in the violence and 240,000 others have had to flee their homes, many of them Rohingya Muslims, a long-persecuted religious minority.

BDST: 1645 HRS, NOV 12, 2013
RoR/SRS