Myanmar police arrested nearly 100 undocumented Rohingya Muslims from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state for illegal travel after raiding two houses in Yangon on Wednesday, saying that they had been trafficked and were heading to Malaysia
Kyaw Ye Thu, president of the Student Union of Pyay University, and Htet Aung, vice president of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABSFU), were convicted under Section 505(b) of Myanmar’s Penal Code and immediately sent to jail
Nine members of an extended family from a village in Maungdaw township were traveling home from a Buddhist alms-giving ceremony when their vehicle hit the mine. Kyaw Ye Aung, 25, his wife Aye Sann Nu, 20, and their son Kyaw Hsan Oo, 3 were killed, while four severely injured family members were taken to a hospital in the state capital Sittwe on Wednesday
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
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The May 14 order was revoked on May 19, frustrating members of the Rohingya community originally displaced from their homes in Sittwe’s Seyton Su Muslim
statement posted around 8 a.m. on the website of the military commander-in-chief’s office said the government army will take legal action against security personnel who conducted unlawful interrogations of the civilians
The confusing situation, especially in the Mon and Rakhine States – where the army has rejected the truce – makes it difficult to attribute responsibility for civilian deaths to rebels or government soldiers
Other officers and soldiers from Myanmar’s government army had also been captured in 2019, Khine Thukha said, while declining to give more detailed information for reasons of security