Villagers flee as Myanmar army confronts uprising
YANGON/COX’S BAZAR: Myanmar’s government said it has evacuated at least 4 000 non-Muslim villagers amid ongoing clashes in north-western Rakhine state, as thousands more Rohingya Muslims sought to flee across the border to Bangladesh yesterday.
The death toll from the violence that erupted on Friday with co-ordinated attacks by Rohingya insurgents has climbed to 98, including some 80 insurgents and 12 members of the security forces, the government said.
Bracing for more violence, thousands of Rohingya – mostly women and children – were trying to forge the Naf River separating Myanmar and Bangladesh and the land border. Reporters at the border could hear gunfire from the Myanmar side yesterday, which triggered a rush of Rohingya towards the no man’s land between the countries.
Around 2 000 people have been able to cross into Bangladesh since Friday. The violence marked a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered since last October, when a similar but much smaller Rohingya attack prompted a brutal military operation with allegations of serious human rights abuses.
Experts said the latest attacks were so widespread they appeared to be more of an uprising than an insurgent offensive.
One army source said the military was also struggling to differentiate.
“All the villagers become insurgents, what they’re doing is like a revolution,” said the source in Rakhine. “They don’t care if they die or not.”
The treatment of 1.1 million Muslim Rohingya in mainly Buddhist Myanmar has emerged as the biggest challenge for national leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi has condemned the raids in which insurgents wielding guns, sticks and home-made bombs assaulted 30 police stations and an army base.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been accused by some Western critics of not speaking out for the long-persecuted Muslim minority.
Win Myat Aye, Myanmar’s minister for social welfare, relief and resettlement, said late on Saturday that 4 000 “ethnic villagers” who had fled their villages had been evacuated, referring to non-Muslim residents of the area.
“We are providing food to the people co-operating with the state government and local authorities,” said Win Myat Aye. He was unable to describe the government’s plans to help Rohingya civilians.
Rakhine residents in ethnically mixed or non-Muslim towns have readied knives and sticks to defend themselves. Many were stranded in their villages in Muslim-majority areas as clashes continued and some roads had been mined, residents said.
People from the main towns of Maungdaw and Buthidaung said they were worried food supply routes had been temporarily cut off.