Myanmar’s military has killed about 30 members of what it has described as a Rohingya Muslim militant group, state media said yesterday, marking the largest escalation of the conflict since fighting erupted in the northwest a month ago.
The weekend’s killings in restive Rakhine State have essentially destroyed any hopes for a swift resolution to the fighting and a gradual restoration of communal ties, observers and diplomats said.
Soldiers have poured into the Maungdaw area along Myanmar’s frontier with Bangladesh in the north of Rakhine, responding to coordinated attacks on three border posts on Oct. 9, in which nine police officers were killed.
Security forces have locked down the area, where the vast majority are Rohingya Muslims — shutting out aid workers and independent observers — and conducted sweeps of villages.
Skirmishes took place throughout the weekend, with state media reporting casualties sustained both on Saturday and Sunday. The total death toll from the weekend was unclear, but included at least 28 alleged attackers and two soldiers.
This has increased the number of casualties since Oct. 9 to more than 60 for the suspected Rohingya Muslim attackers and 17 for the security forces, according to an estimate based on reports by state-owned media.
The violence is the most serious to hit Rakhine since hundreds were killed in communal clashes in 2012.
Myanmar’s 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims are the majority in northern Rakhine, but they are denied citizenship, with many Buddhists regarding them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. They face severe travel restrictions.
Residents and human rights advocates have accused security forces of summary executions, rapes and setting fire to homes in the recent violence.
Satellite images showed widespread destruction of Rohingya villages, including about 430 homes that have been burned down, Human Rights Watch said on Saturday, adding that the destruction was worse than initially feared.
The government and the army reject the accusations, saying they were conducting “clearance operation” in the villages in accordance with the rule of law. They have blamed the “violent attackers” for setting fires to homes.
On Sunday, the military killed at least 19 people after coming under attack from a group wielding machetes and wooden clubs, state-owned newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar said.
On Saturday, the army killed six people and called in helicopters to reinforce, the newspaper said.
Three more bodies of suspected attackers were found “in the aftermath of the clearance operation,” it added.
Rohingya rights advocates have spread online video clips showing what they claimed were civilian casualties of the attacks, calling on the international community to investigate.
However, as access for independent journalists to the area has been cut, reporters could not independently verify either the government accounts or the video clips.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese