Muslim taxi driver says he was pulled out of car and beaten near Shwedagon Pagoda

A Muslim taxi driver is in hospital after a group of men allegedly dragged him onto the street and beat him with iron rods while he was driving past Shwedagon Pagoda yesterday.

Nanda Kyaw, 31, said he was taking a passenger down U Htaung Bo Road at around 7pm when four or five men stopped the car and yelled: “Hey kalar [an offensive word for ‘Muslim’], who allowed you to come near this pagoda?”

During the beating, the attackers allegedly took $50 cash and the driver’s mobile phone worth $150. Nanda Kyaw sustained injuries to his head and hands.

“My passenger left my cab while they were attacking me,” he told Coconuts Yangon from his bed at the Yangon General Hospital’s Department of Neurology. “Then [the attackers] ran away. I followed them until the zoo. But when I was near the zoo, I had to stop driving because I was injured in my head and hands.”

Aung Nyein, the victim’s father, said a case had been filed with Bahan Township police. The station could not immediately be reached for comment.

Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s holiest Buddhist site, has become a point of tension after nationalist monks forced Muslim vendors off the grounds and seized hundreds of dollars in goods on Saturday.

Members of the Patriotic Monks Union seized products from a handful of vendors who sold belts, pots and mobile phone accessories, before violently kicking them out of the pagoda.

“Gradually, Muslims are occupying this pagoda [Shwedagon] as vendors, who can guarantee that they will not bomb the pagoda one day?” U Thu Seikkta, one of the group’s leaders, said in an interview earlier this week.

Yesterday afternoon, he posted on Facebook: “We don’t accept Muslim Kalars to invade near our Shwe Dagon which is the heart of Myanmar people. We don’t even accept crows stopping there.”

He declined to comment on yesterday’s attack.

Nanda Kyaw’s injuries are not thought to be serious, but he was shaken and nervous. He declined to have his picture taken.

Speaking in a quiet voice, he said he was afraid to go back on the roads.

“We need to avoid this happening again, because there is no one to protect us,” he said.