Dhaka, Sept. 30 -- Even now, at 70, Mukim Bala startles at the sound of a procession after dark.

Fourteen years ago, on a night filled with the same sound of chanting crowds, he watched his own home burn before his eyes.

He had committed no crime. Yet flames engulfed the place where his family had lived.

Mukim and his family fled their homestead that night with little more than what they were wearing. They survived by taking shelter in the home of a Muslim neighbour.

Homes burned. Buddhist temples went up in flames. Families lost savings accumulated over years.

But for many Buddhists in Cox's Bazar district's Buddhist-majority Ramu Upazila, the deepest damage was not to buildings.

It was to trust.

Mukim's son, lawyer and activist S...