More than 60,000 civilians in the Burmese State of Chin are currently facing a severe food shortage due to the ongoing fighting between the national army and the Arakan Army rebels
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
Nearly 10,000 displaced villagers in Chin’s remote Paletwa township are in urgent need of shelter before the start of the annual monsoon season later this month, with local officials pledging to build modest bamboo structures for them
Local administrators, lawmakers, and civil society organizations are working together to build 500 living quarters for the IDPs on five acres of township land before annual torrential rains begin in late May, said Khin Saw Wai, a lawmaker from Rathedaung township
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
On Jan. 6, the IRC ended its Tat Lan program that provided sustainable food security and improved nutrition and livelihoods to villages in Rakhine’s Myebon, Pauktaw, Kyaukphyu, and Minbya townships
Soe Aung, head of the administration department in northern Rakhine’s Maungdaw district, said the drivers were hired to drive large vehicles for the Myanmar government’s repatriation reception center in Maungdaw for Rohingya Muslims refugees under the Office of the Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine (UEHRD)
The AA detained 18 firefighter recruits and the deputy station chief of the state Fire Services Department as they travelled on a bus from central Myanmar’s Mandalay region to Rakhine’s capital Sittwe after completing basic firefighting training in the town of Pyin Oo Lwin
Ethnic Rakhines comprise the majority of soldiers who serve in the Myanmar Army in Rakhine state, where the AA has been engaged in heightened armed conflict this year with government forces in a quest for greater autonomy in the region
Many ethnic Rakhines believe they have been sold short on benefits they should have received as part of the central government’s natural resources and infrastructure deals with Myanmar’s larger neighbors — chiefly pipelines that export their state’s oil and natural gas to China and a massive transportation corridor to ship cargo from India to Rakhine’s Sittwe seaport and then on to northeast India via river and highway routes