They were pointing out that this was a loss of cultural heritage. Personally, I'm not one to find much value in cultural heritage in the first place, but religious culture seems like a pretty clear example of culture that was stamped out.

Its interesting that Buddist religions don’t appear to encourage strife per se, my knowledge of asian religions is very spotty, but I don’t think they have the same wars and justification for violence as the western religions do.

Look at Sri Lanka, very bloody civil war between Buddhist majority and Hinduist minority. Atrocities done on both sides, ie at the end when rebels were losing and surrounded, state army was shelling civilians left and right. Another example - history of Ladakh province in northern India - conquered by buddhist armies some +-1000 years ago. Buddhist army, interesting term.

I also had this view that buddhism is a faith that promotes peace - which might be true, but you still have the same human beings behind it. History proves my naive idea wrong.

The current anti-Muslim pogroms in Myanmar (incited by the Buddhist clergy) would seem to provide a counter-example.