More than 100 reporters in Burma are preparing to protest against laws seen as curbing free speech.

Advocates of interfaith harmony say a renaming of the hardline Buddhist nationalist group Ma Ba Tha, and plans to formally inject its ideology into Burma’s political sphere, will do little to staunch — and may even exacerbate — the underlying religious intolerance that the organisation has been accused of fomenting.

One Kaman man said that more than 1,000 men holding swords surrounded his village in 2012. But he escaped the mob, hiding in a pigsty owned by Arakanese Buddhist friends.

“If the Sangha do not respond to us, we will cast the petition across the whole of Rangoon. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll take our campaign to Mandalay and other areas.”

A Buddhist nationalist organisation and local authorities in Naypyidaw are at loggerheads over a planned protest in the capital aimed at Burma’s minister for religious affairs and scheduled for tomorrow.

At least two nationalists have been arrested in connection with a mob search in Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township for alleged undocumented Rohingya's.