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.
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