Myanmar to harvest fields abandoned by Rohingya

FARHANA SULTANA, volunteer at Bangladesh refugee camps

z YANGON: Myanmar’s government will harvest rice from abandoned farmland in violencescorched northern Rakhine State, state media said yesterday, a move likely to raise concerns about the prospect of return for more than half a million Rohingya who have fled communal unrest in the area.

The border region had been emptied of most of its Muslim residents since late August, when Myanmar’s military launched a crackdown on Rohingya rebels that the United Nations said likely amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Hundreds of villages had been razed to the ground, with more than 600,000 Rohingya — a stateless group in mainly Buddhist Myanmar — fleeing across the border for sanctuary in Bangladesh.

State media announced the government would begin harvesting 28,000ha of padi in Maungdaw — the Rohingya-majority area hardest hit by the violence.

The Global New Light of Myanmar report said workers would be bused in from other parts of the country to assist with the harvest.

“For the time being, we were only assigned to harvest, dry and store,” said Then Wai, head of Maungdaw town’s Agricultural Department.

Government officials could not be reached for comment about what would happen to the rice or where the proceeds would go.

Myanmar denied the charge of ethnic cleansing and defended the military campaign as a counteroffensive targeting Rohingya militants who attacked police posts in late August, killing at least a dozen. AFP