Burmese security forces were conducting new rounds of “clearance operations” in conflict-hit Rakhine State after four local Buddhists were attacked and two killed, the office of the military’s commander-in-chief said yesterday, with one of the incidents blamed on Rohingya Muslims.
The violence occurred on Monday evening along Pyu Ma creek in northern Rakhine’s Maungdaw Township, the same region where security forces waged a bloody crackdown against the Rohingya last year.
More than 720,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after Myanmar launched clearance operations in August last year.
Photo: Reuters
UN investigators want the country’s top brass prosecuted for genocide for alleged abuses carried out during the expulsion.
Myanmar said that it was defending itself against Rohingya militants who attacked police posts and has denied almost all claims of atrocities.
Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing’s office said in a statement posted on his official Web site that security forces were active again and had been carrying out “area clearance operations along Pyu Ma creek.”
The activity was sparked after two ethnic Rakhine Buddhist men did not return from fishing and were later found on the creek bank with their throats slit, it said.
On the same day, two members of another ethnic Buddhist minority were attacked while fishing along the creek by six men “speaking Bengali language,” but they escaped and were treated at a local hospital.
Authorities did not know the identities of the attackers, the office said in the statement.
Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as one of its national races and often refers to them as “Bengali” to falsely imply that they are newly arrived immigrants from Bangladesh.
Tensions are high in Rakhine as the government seeks to kick-start a repatriation process, but Rohingya in Bangladesh have refused to take part without being guaranteed rights, citizenship and safety.
The Rohingya still in Rakhine are increasingly isolated and several boats full of men, women and children trying to flee the state have been stopped in the past few weeks and turned around.
The minority has long been persecuted and subjected to apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine, with lack of access to healthcare and freedom of movement curtailed.
Many fear that in their absence Myanmar is changing the landscape of their former homes for good, erasing all signs of their local history.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not