The rights groups who wrote to the election commission represent many of the more than 740,000 Rohingya who fled to neighboring Bangladesh after the Myanmar military launched a brutal crackdown on Rohingya communities in northern Rakhine state three years ago, in the wake of attacks carried out by insurgents on police and army posts there
With cases in Rakhine now accounting for nearly half of the country’s 882 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Monday, relief workers say they are concerned that many locals are not heeding official health advice, while misinformation about the pandemic circulates
The RCSS/SSA-S (Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South) is one of seven ethnic armies operating in the state, and though the group has signed a cease-fire agreement with the central government, tensions have recently reignited over movements by both armies into each other’s territory
The KIA, which is battling Myanmar government forces for greater autonomy in Kachin State, has admitted its troops killed the two boys and promised to apologize and compensate their families, but denied that the killings were ordered by senior commanders. Family members learned of the killings only 16 days later
Civilian detentions, a controversial Myanmar army practice during decades of wars with ethnic armies, are on the rise in the southern part of Rakhine, which had been relatively untouched by the armed conflict that has ravaged the northern section of the state for 19 months, those familiar with the situation told RFA
Mya Thuzar, an attorney the Legal Clinic Myanmar’s Sittwe office who is assisting the woman with her case, said police registered her compliant and questioned her on July 10. The following day, they questioned her daughter, who was spared from assault by the same men because she had given birth six days earlier
Heavy rains caused piles of loose dirt and rubble to collapse on July 2, burying more than 200 scavengers looking for discarded pieces of jade left behind by miners and creating “lake of mud” full of bodies in Kachin state’s Hpakant township. More than 50 others were injured, and about 20 are still missing
The military opened the accounts on Facebook — the most popular social media platform in the country, with 33 million users — to counter what he called misinformation and fake news, he said, adding that the army would follow Facebook’s community standards.
The arrests come as Myanmar’s military is increasingly using the country’s Counter-Terrorism Law to prosecute civilians and local officials for alleged ties to the rebel force. The army has been stepping up its offensives a 17-month-long campaign to crush the AA’s armed drive for greater autonomy for ethnic Rakhines in the state
The May 14 order was revoked on May 19, frustrating members of the Rohingya community originally displaced from their homes in Sittwe’s Seyton Su Muslim