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News > World

Almost 400 Killed in Myanmar Clashes

  • A Rohingya refugee woman carries a child after travelling over the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Teknaf, Bangladesh, on September 1, 2017.

    A Rohingya refugee woman carries a child after travelling over the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Teknaf, Bangladesh, on September 1, 2017. | Photo: Reuters

Published 2 September 2017
Opinion

The death toll makes it the bloodiest violence in Rakhine state since 2012.

Almost 400 people have died in recent violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state triggered by attacks on security forces by insurgents from the Rohingya ethnic minority, the country's military said Friday. 

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Nearly 58,600 Rohingya have fled into neighboring Bangladesh from Myanmar to avoid the growing violence, according to U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

The death toll, posted on the Facebook page of the country’s military commander, is a sharp increase over the previously reported number of just over 100. The statement said all but 29 of the 399 dead were insurgents, whom it described as "terrorists."

Including the initial 30 attacks launched by insurgents on Aug. 25, the statement said there had been 90 armed clashes, making the combat more extensive than previously announced. 

Advocates for the Rohingya said security forces and vigilantes attacked and burned Rohingya villages, shooting civilians and causing others to flee. 

Fortify Rights, an NGO with a focus on Myanmar, said Friday that eyewitnesses have supported accusations that government security personnel “committed mass killings of Rohingya Muslim men, women and children” in Chut Pyin village, Rathedaung township, on Sunday afternoon.

However, the Myanmar government said its security forces are carrying out clearance operations against the insurgents and it is the insurgents who have been burning homes and killing members of the Buddhist ethnic Rakhine community.

“A total of 2,625 houses from Kotankauk, Myinlut and Kyikanpyin villages and two wards in Maungtaw were burned down by the ARSA extremist terrorists,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said, referring to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which claimed responsibility for last week’s attacks. 

But after analyzing satellite imagery and accounts from Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said the Myanmar security forces deliberately set the fires.

“New satellite imagery shows the total destruction of a Muslim village, and prompts serious concerns that the level of devastation in northern Rakhine state may be far worse than originally thought,” said the group’s deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson.

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It is nearly impossible to verify the accounts from both parties because access for journalists to northern Rakhine has been restricted since security forces locked down the area in October.

About 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims live in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, but they are denied citizenship and are seen as "illegal immigrants" by many officials in Myanmar, which is 90 percent Buddhist. 

In 2012, waves of deadly violence erupted in Rakhine state, left 200 dead and forced more than 100,000 Rohingya into displacement camps where many still live. The recent violence has driven many Rohingya to seek shelter in Bangladesh.

Jalal Ahmed, 60, who arrived in Bangladesh on Friday with a group of about 3,000 after walking from Kyikanpyin for almost a week, said to Reuters he believed the Rohingya were being pushed out of Myanmar.

“The military came with 200 people to the village and started fires...All the houses in my village are already destroyed. If we go back there and the army sees us, they will shoot,” he said.

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