BANGKOK – A robust ethnic armed group fighting Myanmar's military government in western Rakhine state claimed Saturday it had captured a town near the border with Bangladesh, marking the newest in a string of victories for enemies of the country's military government.
Members of the state's Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority, who were the goal of deadly violence by the military in 2017, appear to have been the important victims of the fighting within the town of Buthidaung, where the Arakan Army is alleged to have driven out military government troops.
There are conflicting reports about who’s liable for the town's fire, which forced Rohingya residents to flee.
The competing claims couldn’t be independently verified because access to web and mobile phone services was largely disrupted within the region.
Khaing Thukha, a spokesman for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press via text message from an undisclosed location that his group had captured Buthidaung after capturing all of the military outposts there.
The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, which is in search of autonomy from Myanmar's central government. It can also be a member of an armed ethnic group alliance that recently seized strategic territory within the northeast of the country on the border with China.
The group said in a press release Saturday on messaging platform Telegram that fighting continued on the outskirts of Buthidaung town as its troops pursued retreating army soldiers and native Muslims said to be fighting alongside them.
Khaing Thukha said Arakan Army troops were caring for Muslim villagers fleeing the fighting.
He dismissed allegations by Rohingya activists on social media that the Arakan Army set fire to the town, which is home to a majority of Rohingya people.
Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations but are widely viewed by many members of the country's Buddhist majority, including members of the Rakhine minority, as having migrated illegally from Bangladesh. The Rohingya face great prejudice and are generally denied citizenship and other basic rights.
The Rohingya were the goal of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign of rape and murder that saw an estimated 740,000 people flee to neighboring Bangladesh when their villages were burned by government troops in 2017.
The persecutors of the Rohingya minority also included Rakhine nationalist supporters of the Arakan Army. However, the 2021 military coup that overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi modified the political direction, and a resistance movement against military rule – a position also shared by the Arakan Army – counted the Rohingya population amongst its allies.
Ongoing tensions between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the greater than 600,000 Rohingya still living in Rakhine worsened when the federal government recruited Rohingya living in refugee camps for military service in February. Both coercion and guarantees of citizenship were reportedly used to steer them to affix.
Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the surface Myanmar group Free Rohingya Coalition, said in a Friday email to the AP that the Arakan Army had warned Rohingya residents of Buthidaung to evacuate the town by 10 a.m. Saturday , and the greater than 200,000 Rohingya who sought refuge in homes, government buildings, a hospital and schools there found themselves in a particularly dangerous situation.
He also claimed that the Arakan Army fired on a college and a hospital where displaced Rohingya were taking refuge, leading to deaths and injuries.
Aung Kyaw Moe, a Rohingya and deputy minister for human rights within the shadow government of the National Unity Resistance Movement, wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday that Buthidaung had been burned to “a heap of ashes” and that its residents had fled to rice fields outside City.
He didn’t clearly blame the arson, but said the situation was dire for the refugees.
“A full and impartial investigation must be conducted and those responsible must be held accountable,” he wrote. “A revolution against the military dictatorship is just not a license to do whatever you wish. 'War has rules.'”
The military government has long burned villages because it battles pro-democracy and ethnic separatist groups that oppose military rule
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