Rohingya Muslims watch Myanmar police, who are providing security following nearby unrest, in Shwe Zarr village near Maungdaw township in western Myanmar's Rakhine state, Sept. 6, 2017.

Myanmar forces are conducting new “clearance operations” in violence-wracked northern Rakhine state following two separate attacks on ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, while ongoing fighting between an ethnic armed group and government troops continues to drive hundreds of villagers from their homes in other areas.

Security forces are conducting the operations along Pyu Ma creek after six unidentified men attacked and abducted two ethnic Maramagyi men from Kyein Chaung (Middle) village in northern Rakhine Maungdaw district as they were fishing on Monday evening, Myanmar’s Commander-in-Chief’s Office said in an online statement issued Thursday.

The six men who spoke Bengali and arrived by boat took the pair to the creek’s west bank and attacked them. Maung Tha Hla, who sustained five knife wounds, and Saw Tun Oo, who was covered in bruises, managed to escape to Upper Pyu Ma, a Rakhine village on the opposite bank of the creek, the statement said.

As the village administrator and several residents arrived to help them, the attackers fled along the creek to the Nat River, it said.

In a separate case, two ethnic Rakhine men were found dead with their throats slashed on the bank of Pyu Ma creek less than 5,000 feet from the north of Upper Pyu Ma, an ethnic Rakhine village, after they went fishing on Monday evening.

When the two men — Maung Tun Aye from Upper Pyu Ma village in Maungdaw township and Maung Maung Than from Ohn Chaung village in Rathedaung township — did not return, security forces, village administrators, and residents searched for them and found them dead, the statement said.

And on Dec. 16, a teenage girl from Maungdaw’s Thit Taw village was found dead with her throat slit about two miles away after she went missing the previous day while tending cattle, the online journal The Irrawaddy reported.

Local residents said the Myanmar Army appointed more border guards to the area following the incidents, but half the villagers from Pyu Ma have fled out of fear for their safety following the killings.

Residents are fearful because the slayings occurred less than a mile from the community, said San Win, a Nga Khu Ya village resident who attended the funeral of the two murdered men on Thursday.

'Waiting to do this'

Maungdaw district, where Nga Khu Ya village is located, was at the epicenter of a brutal crackdown — also referred to as “clearance operations” — by the military on Rohingya communities following deadly attacks on police outposts by a Muslim militant group in August 2017.

The village was burned down during the campaign of violence in northern Rakhine, which included indiscriminate killings, torture, rape, and arson, and drove more than 725,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh.

The Myanmar government has denied its troops were responsible for atrocities committed against the Rohingya, despite extensive reports and evidence to the contrary that have led the United Nations, rights groups, and other nations to say the campaign amounted to ethnic cleansing, genocidal intent, or genocide itself.

“There is a Muslim village on the other side of Pyu Ma Creek,” San Win told RFA's Myanmar Service. “People are saying that Muslims from this village have been waiting for chance to do this, and that they did it when they had the chance.”

“The villagers are frightened because they can come into the village anytime,” he added. “Only a few people from two or three houses still live here, and they said they are going to leave, too.”

‘Ethnics must be very careful’

Kyaw Win, a villager from Long Ton village adjacent to Pyu Ma village, said ethnic Rakhine residents are often killed by Muslims in the region.

“We have border guards in the region, but not enough to take care of every village,” he told RFA. “There are no security guards in Pyu Ma village.”

Tun Hla Sein, a lawmaker who represents Maungdaw township constituency in the lower house of the national parliament, said most villages, but not all, have security guards to help ensure security.

“Local ethnics have to be very careful,” he said. “When the refugees return from Bangladesh, there will be some who want to live peacefully in Rakhine, but there might also be some who will try to create problems in the region.”

“We have to live together with them because we lived together with them before, but we have to be careful,” he said.

Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement 13 months ago to repatriate Rohingya refugees who want to return voluntarily to Myanmar and who are verified as eligible to return, though the program has yet to begin.

Fighting displaces more villagers

Meanwhile, fighting between the Arakan Army (AA) and the Myanmar military has prompted more than 400 villagers from Rakhine’s Kyauktaw township to flee to safety, local residents said.

They are now staying temporarily in the township’s Kan Saut, Thalu Chaung, and Ngazinyine Khing villages, they said.

They have been fleeing since Dec. 18 when the government army began attacking the AA with heavy weapons.

Maung Thein Sein, a lawmaker from Kyauktaw township, told RFA that the two sides engaged in fighting in Twin Pyannya village on Thursday.

Representatives from the Arakan National Party (ANP), which represents the interests of ethnic Rakhine people in the state, are providing rice to the displaced villagers, Kan Saut, the head of Thinkha Kyaw village, told RFA.

The ANP has requested that Kyauktaw township’s administrator provide the displaced residents with emergency assistance, he said.



Reported by Tin Aung Khine and Min Thein Aung for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. </s> YANGON
• Myanmar forces are conducting new rounds of "clearance operations" in conflict-hit Rakhine state after four Buddhists were attacked and two killed, the commander-in-chief's office said yesterday. One of the incidents was blamed on Rohingya Muslims.

The violence occurred on Monday evening along Pyu Ma creek in northern Rakhine state's Maungdaw township, the same area where forces had 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, and United Nations investigators want the country's top brass prosecuted for genocide for alleged abuses carried out during the expulsion.

Myanmar said it was defending itself against Rohingya militants who attacked police posts and has denied almost all claims of atrocities.

But commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing's office said in a statement posted on his official website yesterday that security forces were active again and had been carrying out "area clearance operations along Pyu Ma Creek".

The post said 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.

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. The authorities said they did not know the identities of the attackers.

Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as one of its national races and refers to them as Bengali to falsely imply that they are newly arrived immigrants from Bangladesh. Tensions are high in northern 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 recent weeks and turned around. </s> The operations come after two ethnic Rakhine Buddhist men were found dead

YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar forces are conducting new rounds of "clearance operations" in conflict-hit Rakhine state after 4 local Buddhists were attacked and two killed, the commander-in-chief's office said Thursday, December 20, with one of the incidents blamed on Rohingya Muslims.

The violence occurred around the evening of December 17 along Pyu Ma creek in northern Rakhine state's Maungdaw township, the same area where 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 2017, and UN investigators want the country's top brass prosecuted for genocide for alleged abuses carried out during the expulsion.

Myanmar said it was defending itself against Rohingya militants who attacked police posts and has denied almost all claims of atrocities.

But the commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing's office said in the statement posted to his official website Thursday that security forces were active again and had been carrying out "area clearance operations along Pyu Ma Creek."

The post said 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.

On the same day two members of another ethnic Buddhist minority were attacked while fishing along the creek by 6 men "speaking Bengali language," but they escaped and were treated at a local hospital.

The post said authorities did not know the identities of the attackers.

Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as one of its national races and refers to them as Bengali to falsely imply they are newly arrived immigrants from Bangladesh. (FAST FACTS: Who are the Rohingya?)

Tensions are high in northern Rakhine as the government seeks to kickstart 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 recent 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. – Rappler.com </s> Myanmar forces resume 'clearance operations' after two Buddhists killed in Rakhine state </s> Myanmar’s military has ended a clearance operation in the country’s troubled Rakhine State, government officials said, ending a four-month sweep that the United Nations said may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing. The security operation had been under way since nine policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border on Oct. 9. Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have since fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, according to UN estimates.

The violence has renewed international criticism that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has done too little to help members of the Muslim minority.

The government led by Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine, including mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims, and said the operation was a lawful counterinsurgency campaign.

“The situation in northern Rakhine has now stabilised. The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased, the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain the peace,” newly-appointed national security advisor Thaung Tun was quoted as saying in a statement released by State Counselor’s Office late on Wednesday.

“There can be no excuse for excessive force, for abuses of fundamental human rights and basic criminality. We have shown that we are ready to act where there is clear evidence of abuses,” he told a group of diplomats and U.N. representatives in a meeting, according to the statement.

Two senior officials from Myanmar’s President Office and the Ministry of Information confirmed that the army operation in northern Rakhine had ended but said the military force remained in the region to maintain “peace and security”.

Myanmar military did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

The military and police have separately set up a team to investigate alleged crimes after Suu Kyi promised to probe UN allegations of atrocities against the Muslim minority.

More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in the crackdown, two senior UN officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence told Reuters last week.

A Myanmar presidential spokesman has said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people had been killed in the counterinsurgency operation.

Rohingya Muslims have faced discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for generations. They are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, entitled only to limited rights and some 1.1 million of them live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar. </s> Myanmar's army said Sunday it had discovered a mass grave containing the bodies of 28 Hindus, including women and children, in violence-wracked Rakhine state, blaming the killings on Muslim Rohingya terrorists.

Thousands of Hindus have fled villages where they once lived alongside Muslims, alleging that they were targeted by militants whose August 25 raids plunged Rakhine into communal violence.

The announcement could not be independently verified in a region where access has been tightly controlled by Myanmar's army.

"Security members found and dug up 28 dead bodies of Hindus who were cruelly and violently killed by ARSA extremist Bengali terrorists in Rakhine State," a statement posted on the army chief's website said.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) is the group whose attacks on police posts triggered an army response.

More than 430,000 Rohingya have fled the region to Bangladesh in under a month.

Around 30,000 Hindus and Buddhists based in the area have also been displaced by the violence.

Both communities have told AFP they were terrorised by Rohingya terrorists.

The army said that security officers found a total of 20 dead women and eight men in two graves, including six boys under the age of ten.

A strong smell led security officers to the burial site outside of Ye Baw Kya village, the army said.

Unverifiable photos published by the government's Information Committee showed corpses laid out in rows on grass near two mud pits where they were found.

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay confirmed the grim discovery to AFP, as did a senior police officer in Rakhine who requested anonymity.

The village where the bodies were found, Ye Baw Kya, lies near a cluster of Hindu and Muslim communities in northern Rakhine called Kha Maung Seik.

Last week Hindus from the area told AFP that militants swept into their villages on August 25 with sticks and knives, attacking people who stood in their way, killing many and taking others into the forest.

Hindu women are believed to have been abducted by the terrorists.

The grim discovery of the graves will further fuel already white-hot hatred between ethnic groups in Myanmar. </s> Army completes ‘clearance operation’ which UN says has caused 69,000 people to flee to Bangladesh

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Myanmar’s military has ended a clearance operation in the country’s troubled Rakhine state, government officials said, ending a four-month sweep that the United Nations said may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

The security operation began in October when nine policemen were killed in attacks on security posts near the Bangladesh border. Almost 69,000 Rohingyas have since fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, according to UN estimates.

The violence has renewed international criticism that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has done too little to help members of the Muslim minority.

Free speech curtailed in Aung San Suu Kyi's Myanmar as prosecutions soar Read more

The government has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine, including mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims, and said the operation was a lawful counter-insurgency campaign.

“The situation in northern Rakhine has now stabilised. The clearance operations undertaken by the military have ceased, the curfew has been eased and there remains only a police presence to maintain the peace,” newly appointed national security adviser Thaung Tun was quoted as saying in a statement released by state counsellor’s office late on Wednesday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rohingya refugees gather for aid supplies in Chittagong. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

“There can be no excuse for excessive force, for abuses of fundamental human rights and basic criminality. We have shown that we are ready to act where there is clear evidence of abuses,” he told a group of diplomats and UN representatives in a meeting, according to the statement.

Two senior officials from Myanmar’s president office and the ministry of information confirmed that the army operation in northern Rakhine had ended but said the military force remained in the region to maintain “peace and security”.

Myanmar military did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rohingya refugees unpack relief supplies at the Leda Rohingya refugee camp in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

The military and police have set up a team to investigate alleged crimes after Suu Kyi promised to probe UN allegations of atrocities against the Muslim minority.

More than 1,000 Rohingyas may have been killed in the crackdown, two senior UN officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence told Reuters last week.

Glimmer of hope for 10,000 refugees left stranded by Australia's inaction Read more

A Myanmar presidential spokesman has said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people had been killed in the counterinsurgency operation.

Rohingya Muslims have faced discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for generations. They are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, entitled only to limited rights and some 1.1 million of them live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar. </s> UNHCR says Rohingya Muslims returns to Myanmar must not be rushed or premature

Myanmar military on Thursday shot dead seven civilians, who were among many villagers detained for interrogation in the country's Rakhine state, a lawmaker said.

The military earlier this week announced that it rounded up several hundred people in several villages in Rakhine state's Yathay Taung Township for questioning for their alleged ties to the Arakan Army, an ethnic rebel group.

It also said 275 men were held for interrogation at a school in Kyauk Tan village in Yathay Taung Township.

Soldiers on Thursday opened fire as a clash erupted with the detained villagers, according to Khim Maung Lat, a member of the country's upper house of the parliament.

"Seven villagers were shot dead and eight others were seriously injured," he told Anadolu Agency by phone.

"Before this accident, four civilians were also killed during the interrogation in other villages," he said.

The lawmaker said the military has ignored the request made by regional parliament to hand over the detainees to police.

"Civilians are being killed. It is unacceptable," he added.

Brig. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, a military spokesman, has confirmed the killing of six civilians.

According to him, the villagers attempt to seize weapons and harm the security forces during the interrogation.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and Myanmar Red Cross said in a statement they had transferred three "seriously injured patients" to hospital in the state capital of Sittwe, as well as two other "civilians" to a local hospital.

"The ICRC is concerned about increasing numbers of civilian casualties during the recent weeks, and urge all parties to the conflict to protect the civilian population in line with International Humanitarian Law," said Stephan Sakalian, head of delegation in Myanmar for the ICRC.

Rakhine came to global attention after about 730,000 Rohingya Muslims crossed into Bangladesh fleeing a military crackdown in response to militant attacks in 2017. U.N. investigators have called for senior military officers to be prosecuted over allegations of mass killings, gang rapes and arson. The military denies widespread wrongdoing.

More recently, civilians have been caught up in clashes between the military and the Arakan Army, an insurgent group that recruits from the mainly Buddhist ethnic Rakhine population and is fighting for greater autonomy for the state.

Since November, the fighting has displaced nearly 33,000 people across a large part of central and northern Rakhine and part of neighboring Chin state, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The military has initiated legal action against two news organizations, accusing them of defamation for reports that detailed the alleged shooting of civilians by soldiers in March.

Zaw Min Tun told Reuters military and police searching the Rathedaung area's Kyauk Tan village for suspected Arakan Army members found scores of people who were not registered with authorities as living there, so gathered those people in the school.

As well as those killed in the shooting, eight people had been brought to the hospital in nearby Zedi Pyin village with gunshots wounds, said Maung Soe Win, chairman of the Mayu Region Development Association, a local community group, who was at the hospital.

The injured people said they had been detained for two days when one villager with a mental health problem "got up, shouted and ran away in the middle of the night," said Maung Soe Win.

"Then (security forces) shot the villagers continuously," he told Reuters by phone.

Another military spokesman, Major General Tun Tun Nyi, said on Thursday afternoon the remaining villagers were still being held at the school and investigated for links to the Arakan Army. </s> YANGON: Myanmar's army said on Sunday (Sep 24) it had discovered a mass grave containing the bodies of 28 Hindus, including women and children, in violence-wracked Rakhine state, blaming the killings on Muslim Rohingya militants.

Thousands of Hindus have fled villages where they once lived alongside Muslims, alleging that they were targeted by militants whose Aug 25 raids plunged Rakhine into communal violence.

The announcement could not be independently verified in an region where access has been tightly controlled by Myanmar's army.

"Security members found and dug up 28 dead bodies of Hindus who were cruelly and violently killed by ARSA extremist Bengali terrorists in Rakhine State," a statement posted on the army chief's website said.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) is the group whose attacks on police posts triggered an army backlash so brutal that the UN believes it amounts to ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority.

More than 430,000 Rohingya have fled the region to Bangladesh in under a month, telling stories of Myanmar soldiers teaming up with vigilante mobs to slaughter civilians and burn entire villages to the ground.

Around 30,000 Hindus and Buddhists based in the area have also been displaced by the violence. Both communities have told AFP they were terrorised by Rohingya militants.

The army said that security officers found a total of 20 dead women and eight men in two graves, including six boys under the age of ten.

A strong smell led security officers to the burial site outside of Ye Baw Kya village, the army said.

Unverifiable photos published by the government's Information Committee showed corpses laid out in rows on grass near two mud pits where they were found.

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay confirmed the grim discovery to AFP, as did a senior police officer in Rakhine who requested anonymity.

The village where the bodies were found, Ye Baw Kya, lies near a cluster of Hindu and Muslim communities in northern Rakhine called Kha Maung Seik.

Last week Hindus from the area told AFP that militants swept into their villages on August 25 with sticks and knives, attacking people who stood in their way, killing many and taking others into the forest.

Hindu women are believed to have been abducted by the militants.

The grim discovery of the graves will further fuel already white-hot hatred between ethnic groups in Myanmar.

The epicentre of the unrest, in northern Rakhine, is dominated by Rohingya Muslims who are a minority elsewhere and have been the target of decades of state-backed persecution and discrimination.

Around half of their estimated 1.1 million population has fled over the last year.

Northern Rakhine is also home to ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, Hindus and a myriad of other groups.

Religious tensions have simmered for years, erupting into sporadic bouts of violence.

But the scale of the latest unrest is the worst to hit the region in years.

While the wretched lines of Rohingya streaming into Bangladesh have shocked and alarmed the world, there is scant sympathy for the Muslim group inside Myanmar.

Many in the Buddhist majority view the group as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, despite their long-established roots in the country.
Myanmar's military announces it will resume "clearance operations" in Rakhine State after a recent spike in attacks by unidentified assailants. In the past week, two Rakhine fishermen and a teenager were found murdered after they were reported missing, while two Maramagyi villagers were kidnapped and stabbed but managed to escape their abductors.