[The tension presents a challenge for the government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, which took office in March and has tried to promote peace and ethnic reconciliation in border areas like Rakhine. Despite those pledges, her government has faced accusations of being unsympathetic to the plight of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority in the Buddhist-majority country.]
By Mike Ives
 |
|
A soldier patrolling at
the entrance of Maungdaw Township, in Rakhine State,
on Monday. Reports
indicated a significant escalation of tension in the state,
which has long been a
site of sectarian conflict.Credit Agence
France-
Presse — Getty Images
|
Violence has continued in a restive area of
Myanmar since nine police officers were killed there over the weekend, the
government said on Wednesday, as a rights group said it had documented what
appeared to be extrajudicial killings of Muslims by the army.
The news that 12 people had been killed in
clashes on Tuesday in Rakhine State, reported on Wednesday in government
newspapers, suggested a significant escalation of tension in a region known for
bitter sectarian conflict, as did the circulation online of videos depicting
what appeared to be heavily armed Muslim fighters in Myanmar.
The tension presents a challenge for the
government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, which took office in March and has
tried to promote peace and ethnic reconciliation in border areas like Rakhine.
Despite those pledges, her government has faced accusations of being
unsympathetic to the plight of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority in
the Buddhist-majority country.
“The latest spread of violence not only has
unhelpful implications for the achievement of nationwide peace, but it is also
exacerbating the most difficult communal, religious and ethnicity conflict in
the country,” said Tom Kramer, a researcher at the Transnational Institute, a
nonprofit consultancy in the Netherlands that has studied the process of ethnic
conflict and reconciliation in Myanmar.
The attacks on police officers occurred early
on Sunday in three places in the townships of Maungdaw and Rathedaung, and they
were followed by skirmishes in Maungdaw, according to a report by the Center
for Diversity and National Harmony, an independent nonprofit organization that
receives funding from the United Nations and from the Norwegian and Swiss
governments.
The report said that the initial assaults —
in which attackers used knives, guns and slingshots — had left at least 17
people dead, including eight attackers and the nine police officers, and that
subsequent attacks had caused 12 more deaths. It said that violence had
prompted travel restrictions in and out of Maungdaw and that Muslim shops there
had closed.
Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh, was the
site of violence between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012 that left hundreds dead
and underscored the deep ethnic intolerance that pervades the area.
Matthew Smith, the chief executive of Fortify
Rights, a Southeast Asia advocacy group that monitors human rights in Rakhine,
said on Wednesday that the army appeared to be mounting an offensive against
Muslims in Maungdaw and that witnesses there had described extrajudicial
killings by soldiers.
“We’ve spoken to eyewitnesses in Maungdaw
Township who report witnessing the Myanmar Army shooting and killing Rohingya
men,” Mr. Smith said.
He added that Fortify Rights had confirmed
three killings so far and that witnesses said all three victims had been
unarmed. Mr. Smith said that the Myanmar authorities had a history of cracking
down on local populations in response to what they perceive to be security
threats, and that the killings his group had documented appeared to be part of
that trend.
Neither witnesses nor a government spokesman
could immediately be reached for a response to Mr. Smith’s assertion.
Also on Wednesday, two videos were
circulating online that appeared to show a group of heavily armed Rohingya men
calling for jihad and saying they were being pursued by army helicopters.
“I am speaking to all Rohingya brothers
around the world,” a man in one of the videos said in the Rohingya language,
according to a translation provided by Fortify Rights. “Please prepare for
jihad and come here. Please try to join us.”
A government official, speaking on the
condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the issue, said that
the video appeared to be authentic. Mr. Smith agreed, saying there were
indications that it had been shot in Rakhine and that Myanmar Army helicopters
had been deployed after the attacks on Sunday.
But Mr. Smith said the sight of heavily armed
Rohingya men in Rakhine was highly unusual and should not be taken as a sign of
widespread militancy among Muslims in the area.
The roughly one million Rohingya who live in
Rakhine are officially stateless, having been denied citizenship by the Myanmar
authorities, who call them Bengalis and say they are from Bangladesh, even if
their families have been in Myanmar for generations. More than 100,000 Rohingya
live in squalid refugee camps on the rural fringes of Sittwe, a provincial
capital with a tumbledown seaport.
After the attacks on Sunday, Ms. Aung San Suu
Kyi told government officials that the matter had to be dealt with by law
enforcement, according to U Pe Myint, the information minister. State news
media reported that Mr. Pe Myint was among a group of senior officials who traveled
to Rakhine on Tuesday to assess fallout from the recent violence.
On Tuesday in New York, Vijay Nambiar, the
special adviser on Myanmar to the United Nations secretary general, called for
calm in Rakhine.
“At this delicate juncture, the local communities
at all levels must refuse to be provoked by these incidents and their leaders
must work actively to prevent incitement of animosity or mutual hatred between
Buddhist and Muslim communities,” he said in a statement.
But Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at
Human Rights Watch, said that Myanmar had failed to investigate the 2012
outbreak of violence in Rakhine in a “substantive way,” and that he worried
about the precedent such inaction might set.
“The problem is that if there is no
fact-based, transparent and credible investigation to sort out what really
happened, then anyone on social media with an ax to grind can manipulate any
government statement, or even unsubstantiated rumors, to justify their calls
for retaliation,” Mr. Robertson said in an email on Wednesday. “And with that,
Rakhine State can quickly descend down the dark path to more violence.”
Several suspects have been detained since the
Sunday attacks, state news media reported on Wednesday, and U Kyaw Mya Win, a
police officer in Maungdaw, said by telephone that the situation there had
stabilized.
People in and around nearby Sittwe, however,
said by telephone that the area felt less safe.
U Kyaw Hla Aung, a Rohingya community leader,
said soldiers had streamed into the refugee camp where he lives and warned him
not to leave at night or risk being shot. The claim could not be independently
verified.
Saw Nang and Wai Moe contributed reporting.
