Nearly 53,000 people in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, applied for a passport in just a five-day period at the end of February after the portal was opened, the Myanmar Passport Issuing Board said.
The Mahana is a government-appointed council that oversees and regulates the Buddhist clergy in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. In March 2017, its office in Mandalay prohibited Wirathu from giving sermons for a year because of his hate speech and anti-Muslim rhetoric