Amnesty International says military shelling villages, limiting
access to food and keeping humanitarian groups out.
Myanmar's military is shelling villages and preventing civilians from
getting food and humanitarian help, amid an intensifying crackdown on the rebel
Arakan Army in the restive northwestern state of Rakhine that has pushed
thousands from their homes, Amnesty International has said.
The human rights group said on Monday its investigations also found that
the security forces had used vague and repressive laws to detain civilians in
its battle against the Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine group that is fighting
for more autonomy.
"These latest operations are yet another reminder that the Myanmar
military operates without any regard for human rights," Tirana Hassan,
Amnesty's director of crisis response, said in a statement. "Shelling
inhabited villages and withholding food supplies is unjustifiable under any
circumstances."
Fighting between the military and Arakan Army intensified in January
after the rebels attacked a police post leaving 13 officers dead.
The military responded by deploying more troops to the region, the site
of a massive crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in 2017, in an attempt
to "crush" the fighters. The United Nations says some 5,200 people
had been forced from their homes on January 28, as a result of the conflict.
There was no immediate response from the Myanmar authorities to Amnesty's
report.
Unlawful tactics
Amnesty said it had spoken to people affected by the fighting, as well as
to local activists and humanitarian workers to get an understanding of the
effects of the latest unrest. It said most of those forced to flee were
Buddhist and included minority Mro, Khami, Daingnet and Rakhine people. Myanmar
has about 135 different ethnic groups.
It noted that unlawful tactics had been a "hallmark of the
military's operations against armed groups" and that previous operations
in Kachin and northern Shan states had killed and wounded civilians and
displaced thousands. It added that the troop build-up in Rakhine included the
99th Light Infantry Division, a unit Amnesty and others had previously
implicated in atrocities against the Rohingya in August 2017.
Two villagers who spoke to Amnesty said that they had fled their homes
under military bombardment and when they returned to collect belongings
discovered money and other valuables were missing. They suspected soldiers of
the theft because troops had been expected to secure the area.
Another said Myanmar soldiers and police had restricted the amount of
rice that people in her village could bring into the settlement even though
they were already suffering from a shortage of basic foods because fighting in
December had prevented them from harvesting their crops. As a result, they
abandoned the village, as had other people in settlements nearby.
"We talked among ourselves that it was impossible to live in our
village any more," the 34-year-old woman from a remote ethnic Mro village
in Kyauktaw Township told Amnesty. "We didn't want to move to a (displaced
persons) camp, but we couldn't trade what we found in the forest and we
couldn't get through enough supplies."
Military presence
The unrest has also spilled over into neighboring Chin State where
locally-based human rights monitors say the sporadic violence and escalating
military presence in its southern part is affecting local communities.
An update from the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) that was
released on Sunday said the military had imposed restrictions on movement and a
curfew in three villages after troops moved into a nearby town. Residents told
CHRO more than 50 military vehicles had arrived in Matupi Town, checkpoints had
been erected and that there were regular helicopter flights in and out of the
area.
Despite the unrest in Rakhine, the Myanmar authorities have made it more
difficult for aid groups to work in the region, Amnesty said. On January 10,
the Rakhine government barred all UN agencies and international organizations
with the exception of the Red Cross and the World Food Program from operating
in the five conflict-affected townships.
"The Myanmar authorities are deliberately playing with the lives and
livelihoods of civilians," Hassan said. "As we've seen time and
again, the military's priority is not to protect people in the crossfire, but
rather to hide their abuses from the international community."
Amnesty said it had also gathered evidence that the military and police
were abusing the law to detain and prosecute civilians, including Aung Tun
Sein, a Mro village leader who had been picked up in the wake of an outbreak of
fighting in the area around his village in mid-January and remained in jail.
Ten other men held with him were released.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
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