Russia detains at least 200 protesters supporting Rohingyas

The square in the city centre was surrounded with police vans and policemen were leading people away into the vans, an AFP correspondent at the scene said, counting over 100 detained at the unauthorised demonstration.

"Our brothers are being detained! Why are Muslims always to blame, why are they detaining us?" one protester shouted. "Why can't we express ourselves," complained another protester, Makhmud, 45. "We are worried about what is happening with our brothers in Myanmar."

The plight of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, where nearly 300,000 have fled their homes from what they say are state-orchestrated mass killings into neighbouring Bangladesh, has seen Russia's Muslims stage several protests, particularly after a call by Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.

Thousands rallied in Chechnya's main city Grozny last week as Kadyrov called on Moscow to "stop this bloodshed" in a rare break from his public image as a fervent loyalist of President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow however has been mute over Myanmar. "We're against any sort of violence," Putin said Tuesday when asked about Kadyrov's position, adding that "any person has a right to his opinion regardless of his post."

Russia and Myanmar are also allies who signed a military cooperation agreement last year, with Moscow of having exported military aircraft and artillery to the country.

Meanwhile, for an estimated 300,000 Rohingya Muslims living in squalor in Pakistan's largest city, the news from Myanmar in the past two weeks is reviving painful memories of the violence that drove many of them here half a century ago. Some say they have got word of relatives being killed in Myanmar's Rakhine state or are not being able to contact family members.

Karachi's Rohingya community comprises migrants from an earlier era of displacement dating back to the 1960s and '70s. Despite decades in a foreign land, they have stayed in touch with family back home, especially in recent years through mobile phones and social media.

Hundreds of homes in Rohingya villages have been burned and about 400 people have been killed.

The older members of Karachi's Rohingya community fled from a repressive military regime that took power in 1962, escaping on foot or by boat to Bangladesh, which was then East Pakistan. Eventually, they made their way to Karachi.