Aid shipment targeted in Myanmar
■ Protesters throw petrol bombs at Red Cross workers supplying aid to Rakhine Muslims
Sittwe, Myanmar, Sept. 21: Buddhist protesters in Myanmar threw petrol bombs to try to block a shipment of aid to Muslims in Rakhine state, where the United Nations has accused the military of ethnic cleansing, before police fired in the air to disperse them.
The incident late on Wednesday reflected rising communal animosity, and came as US President Donald Trump called for a quick end to the violence that has raised concern about Myanmar’s transition from military rule.
Myanmar’s Army Chief, in his major speech on his plans for Rakhine state while on his first visit there since the strife erupted in August, called for internally displaced non-Muslims to go home.
But he made no mention of the 422,000 Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape his Army’s sweeping counter-insurgency operation.
Hundreds of protesters were involved in the attempt to stop Red Cross workers loading a boat with relief supplies bound for the north of the Rakhine state where insurgent attacks on August 25 sparked a sweeping military backlash.
The boat was being loaded with about 50 tonnes of aid at a dock in the state capital of Sittwe, a government information office said. “People thought the aid was only for the Bengalis,” the secretary of the state government, Tin Maung Swe, said, using a term that Rohingya find offensive.
Protesters, some carrying sticks and metal bars, threw petrol bombs and about 200 police eventually dispersed them by shooting into the air, a witness and the government information office said.
The witness said that he saw some injured people. Eight people were detained, the office said. No aid workers were hurt, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said. “All emergency support done by the organisation and in themovement is done in a neutral and impartial manner,” the spokeswoman, Maria Cecilia Goin, citing what the workers had told the crowd before authorities intervened.