Monday, August 22, 2011

Vendors in Tamu on the Indo-Burmese border stage a boycott

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Monday, 22 August 2011 14:42 Salai Han Thar San

New Delhi (Mizzima) – To protest Khasi rebels in India extorting money from customers at a market in Tamu, the vendors have stopped selling goods since Saturday on the Burmese side of the border with India.

Khasi rebel soldiers beat a customer, an Indian citizen, on Saturday in the Nanphalone Market in Tamu in Sagaing Region to extort money, prompting the vendors to launch their boycott protest.

“They tried to extort money when a customer was buying from a shop. They wanted 50,000 rupees. When the customer refused to pay the money, they beat the customer in front of the shop. The sellers launched the protest by closing all the shops,” a greengrocer told Mizzima.

Nearly all of a total of 1,000 shops in the Nanphalone Market, a key location for border trade, were closed on Sunday afternoon except for a few grocery shops outside the market.

“If they extort money from customers like this, people from India will be afraid to come to the market to buy things,” said a vendor.

Since the boycott began, more police and soldiers have been posted in Tamu including around the market. The Nanphalone Market is located near border gate No. 2 in northern Tamu. The main goods in the market are clothes and food products from Burma.

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