Myanmar president signs bills perceived as targeting Muslim minorities, interfaith couples, and the unmarried into law

• President Thein Sein signed four “Race and Religious Protection Laws” into being in the lead-up to November elections.
• The laws include one criminalizing polygamy and unmarried cohabitation and two laws restricting religious conversion and interfaith marriage.
• Buddhist nationalists in the country have promoted the laws as the latest in a series of measures restricting the activities and practices of the country’s Muslim minority.

“They set out the potential for discrimination on religious grounds and pose the possibility for serious communal tension.”

Read the full story at Reuters.

(Image Credit: Toru Hanai/Reuters)