Myanmar's Armed Groups Shifting Loyalty To China?

THE ASEAN POST

Maria Siow

29 March 2021

This file photo shows Rakhine ethnic people attending an ANP (Arakan National Party) event in Yangon for the Myanmar general election. (AFP Photo)

After weeks of silence as Myanmar ’s military cracked down on civilians protesting against the 1 February coup, the Arakan Army (AA), a major player among the country’s more than two dozen ethnic armed groups, this week announced it was on the side of the people.

“The current actions by the Burmese army and police are very cruel and unacceptable,” AA spokesman Khine Thu Khahe said on Tuesday (23 March), adding that “the oppressed ethnic people as a whole will continue to fight for their freedom from oppression”.

The AA’s statement was significant, as it comes just weeks after Myanmar’s junta removed the militia from its list of terrorist groups as a means of establishing peace across the nation of 55 million.

China's Relationship With Myanmar's Military: It's Complicated

KGOU

MICHAEL SULLIVAN

MAR 29, 2021

Originally published on March 29, 2021 11:37 pm

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

It was a bloody weekend in Myanmar. Security forces, again, used live ammunition against protesters all over the country, killing at least 114 people. It was the bloodiest single day since the coup began and drew condemnation from around the world but not from neighboring China, a country with a complicated relationship with Myanmar's military. Michael Sullivan reports from neighboring Thailand.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: In mid-January, China's foreign minister Wang Yi made a high-profile visit to Myanmar and met with the leader of the democratically elected government, Aung San Suu Kyi - yet another sign of China's deepening economic ties with an approval of Suu Kyi's civilian-led government. Just two weeks later, she was in jail. Myanmar's military was back in charge, and the country was in turmoil.

BRAC takes special initiative to support Rohingya fire victims

METRO
UNB, Dhaka
29 March, 2021

BRAC has taken up an initiative for rehabilitation of Rohingya refugees, who have been affected in a fire incident at Rohingya camps in Ukhiya upazila of Cox’s Bazar district.

Aided by the government, BRAC in coordination with development organisations started food distribution, supply of pure drinking water, construction of shelter and other emergency works at No. 8 and 9 Rohingya camps at Balukhali in Ukhiya.

On behalf of BRAC, 34,000 liters of water was distributed, 49 deep tube-well and 239 shallow tube-well repaired and 319 latrines repaired for the affected people till March 28, said a press release.

Anguish in Myanmar after weekend of 'outrageous' bloodshed

CNN
Helen Regan, 
March 30, 2021

(CNN)Myanmar's military junta chief Min Aung Hlaing threw a lavish dinner party Saturday while his troops reportedly shot dead more than 100 people in the streets and forced thousands of people to flee into neighboring Thailand, during a weekend of indiscriminate terror and bloodshed that was widely condemned internationally.

Images posted on social media showed the coup leader dressed in a bow tie and a white, medal-laiden jacket walking a red carpet, greeting attendees and sitting down to a meal to mark Armed Forces Day.

ကုလသမဂၢလုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီသည္ ၂၀၂၁ ခုႏွစ္ မတ္လ ၃၁ ရက္ေန႔က ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအေရးႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ တံခါးပိတ္အစည္းအေဝး က်င္းပခဲ့ပါသည္။

ကုလသမဂၢလုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီသည္ ၂၀၂၁ ခုႏွစ္ မတ္လ ၃၁ ရက္ေန႔က ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအေရးႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ တံခါးပိတ္အစည္းအေဝး က်င္းပခဲ့ပါသည္။

Zawgyi:

လုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီအဖြဲ႕ဝင္မ်ားသည္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံတြင္ လၽွင္ျမန္စြာ ယိုယြင္းပ်က္ျပားလာေသာ အေျခအေနကို မ်ားစြာ စိုးရိမ္ပူပန္ေနၿပီး ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ ဆႏၵထုတ္ေဖာ္သူမ်ားအေပၚ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈ ႏွင့္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားႏွင့္ ကေလးမ်ားအပါအဝင္ အရပ္သားမ်ား ရာႏွင့္ခ်ီ၍ ေသဆုံးရမႈမ်ားကို ျပင္းထန္စြာ ကန႔္ကြက္ရႈတ္ခ်ပါသည္။

လုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီ အဖြဲ႕ဝင္မ်ားက ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္အား အဆုံးစြန္အထိ ထိန္းထိန္းသိမ္းသိမ္းျဖင့္ ေဆာင္ရြက္ရန္ ထပ္ေလာင္းတိုက္တြန္းလိုက္ပါသည္။ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကို အျပည့္အဝ ေလးစားရန္ ႏွင့္ ျမန္မာျပည္သူမ်ား၏ ဆႏၵႏွင့္အညီ၊ ျမန္မာျပည္သူမ်ား၏ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကို ေရွးရႈလ်က္ ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးမႈႏွင့္ ျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရး ေဆာင္ရြက္မႈတို႔ ျပဳလုပ္ရန္ လိုအပ္ေၾကာင္းကို ထပ္ေလာင္း ေျပာဆိုပါသည္။ သက္ဆိုင္သူအားလုံးမွ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈကို ေရွာင္ရွားၾကရန္ တိုက္တြန္းပါသည္။ ထို႔ျပင္ နိုင္ငံေတာ္အတိုင္ပင္ခံပုဂၢိဳလ္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ႏွင့္ နိုင္ငံေတာ္ သမၼတဦးဝင္းျမင့္အပါအဝင္ ဖမ္းဆီး ထိန္းသိမ္းထားသူမ်ားအားလုံးကို ခ်က္ခ်င္းျပန္လႊတ္ေပးရန္ ထပ္မံတိုက္တြန္းလိုက္သည္။

Rohingya youths: We need education for empowerment

Dhaka Tribune 

Tribune Report
March 29th, 2021

File Photo of a Rohingya camp in Cox's Bazar Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka Tribune 

 

'We need a chance to change our future, and education is the only way'

The Rohingya community needs access to education facilities to become empowered and build a future, Rohingya youths from the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar said at a webinar on Monday.

The webinar, titled “Camp voices webinar series-3: Strengths and aspirations of Rohingya refugees,” was arranged by the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ) of Brac University. The discussion addressed key issues related to the role of the youth in building peace, social cohesion, livelihoods, and education for Rohingya children and girls.

Rohingya militants said to kill 22 Myanmar troops

AA
Sorwar Alam
ANKARA
30.03.2021

Claim of attack on military post in Rakhine state comes amid nationwide protest against military junta in Myanmar

A Myanmar-based Rohingya militant group on Tuesday claimed to have killed 22 Myanmar soldiers in a pre-dawn raid on an army post in the western Rakhine state."Today [Tuesday] Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) attacked on Burmese military in the morning between 4.30 a.m. to 7.00 a.m. on 44-BP (Burmese military camp), leading to 22 Casualties among Burmese troops," the group said in a statement accessed by Anadolu Agency.

They launched the attack "from three sides of camps with heavy machine guns," it claimed, adding that there were nearly 100 soldiers in the camp and that their militants left after two hours of fighting.

There was no official statement about the incident by the military, as the country is facing huge protest against the military junta that has killed more than 500 protesters across the country since Feb. 1.

The militant group’s claim to have killed soldiers in Rakhine state – home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims minorities – cannot be independently verified by Anadolu Agency.

Since around 2017, over one million Rohingya, described by the UN as the most persecuted minority in the world, fled Myanmar’s brutal military crackdown in Rakhine state and took shelter in neighboring Bangladesh.

"RSO want the freedom of Rakhine, and they [are] committed to taking back all Rohingya who have exiled from their motherland," said the group’s statement.

The group also vowed it "will continue to attack the Burmese military until they achieved freedom of Arakan (Rakhine) and all Rohingya refugees return to their motherland." 

Link : Here

Global condemnation of Myanmar military's 'reign of terror' after deadliest day since coup

FRANCH 24

Text by:NEWS WIRES
28/03/2021

Defence chiefs from a dozen countries on Sunday jointly condemned the bloodbath in Myanmar a day earlier, when at least 107 people -- including seven children -- were killed as security forces opened fire on anti-coup protesters.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted and detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, triggering mass protests demanding a return to democracy.

The junta on Saturday staged a major show of might for its annual Armed Forces Day as the death toll from crackdowns since the coup climbed to at least 423, according to a local monitoring group.

Disgraceful generals are turning Myanmar into a pariah state

The Telegraph

TELEGRAPH VIEW

29 March 2021 

The sight of senior military officers in Myanmar celebrating the country’s Armed Forces Day at the weekend with a lavish party after troops had earlier shot dead more than 100 protesters was sickening. As the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, it represented a new low in the country’s recent lurch back to despotism after a brief flirtation with democracy. Children were among those gunned down and the security forces even intervened in funerals to arrest those who had taken part in the demonstrations.

It is only six years since the first democratic elections in Myanmar seemed to presage its admission into the comity of nations after decades of military rule. They marked a personal triumph for Aung San Suu Kyi, for years held under house arrest before international pressure secured her release. Suu Kyi, while spurning formal office, was the power behind the new government and consequently blotted her reputation as a human rights champion when she failed to stand up for the persecuted Muslim Rohingyas.

Burning plastic, Dust, and Ash: The Rohingya Refugee Camp Fire

MEDAIR

Lucy Bamforth

29 March 2021

On the afternoon of Monday, 22 March 2021, a massive fire tore through Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Flames ate through the plastic sheeting and bamboo-pole structures in seconds, filling the sky with plumes of black smoke. The fire spread rapidly. People grabbed what they could and ran, carrying elderly relatives, children, or the few possessions they had in their arms. Families were separated in the rush to outrun the flames; days later, children are still searching for parents, and spouses are trying to find their significant other.

Rohingya refugees to speak on their aspirations

Dhaka Tribune

Atikur Rahman
March 28th, 2021

File photo of Rohingya refugees getting briefed about their stay at Bhashan Char after relocating there from the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, on Friday, December 4, 2020 Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan/Dhaka Tribune

The webinar will take place at 3pm on the Brac University Centre for Peace and Justice Facebook page

The Brac University Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ) is set to organize a webinar featuring speeches from five of CPJ's Rohingya research volunteers on Monday, March 29, 2021.

The webinar will focus on the strengths and aspirations of Rohingya refugees, who were forced to flee their homes due to violent persecution. The discussion will also feature refugees speaking on their thoughts for the foreseeable future, and includes direct information from Rohingya camp residents working closely on relief efforts.

Suu Kyi ally wants equal rights for persecuted Rohingya Muslims

THESTRAITSTIMES

MAR 29, 2021,

A Rohingya refugee family rests in a temporary shelter in Ukhia, Bangladesh, on March 25, 2021.PHOTO: AFP

SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) - Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims living in refugee camps in Bangladesh should be reintegrated into Myanmar society and afforded "full rights" including citizenship, according to a key ally of ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Speaking in an interview last week, Dr Sasa, who uses just one name and describes himself as the envoy representing Myanmar's Parliament to the United Nations, said it was time for the country's 55 million people to set aside their differences and face down a military that seized power last month.

Troops Fire at Funeral as Myanmar Mourns Bloodiest Day Since Coup

U.S.News

By Reuters, 

Wire Service Content 

March 27, 2021

Men run during a protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar March 28, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer REUTERS

(REUTERS) -MYANMAR security forces opened fire at a funeral on Sunday, witnesses said, as people across the country gathered to mourn 114 people killed the previous day in the worst crackdown on protests since last month's military coup.

Mourners fled the shooting at a service for 20-year-old student Thae Maung Maung in Bago near the commercial capital Yangon and there were no immediate reports of casualties, three people in the town told Reuters.

UN rights chief, genocide aide warn Myanmar on killings

AA

Peter Kenny

GENEVA 
28.03.2021

Top UN officials call killing of 141 by military in bloodiest day of Myanmar anti-coup protests 'shameful, cowardly, brutal'

The UN human rights chief and the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide on Sunday issued a clear warning of a heightened risk of atrocity crimes in Myanmar, following another day of widespread bloodshed by the Myanmar military.

Michelle Bachelet, the high commissioner for human rights, and Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, issued a joint statement as the death toll in Myanmar's bloodiest day on Saturday rose to 141, including at least seven children.

"The shameful, cowardly, brutal actions of the military and police – who have been filmed shooting at protesters as they flee, and who have not even spared young children – must be halted immediately," said Bachelet and Nderitu.

U.S. and Britain blacklist Myanmar military-controlled companies

Brinkwire

JONATHAN EDWARDS 

MARCH 29, 2021

WASHINGTON, March 25 – The United States and Britain imposed sanctions on conglomerates controlled by Myanmar’s military on Thursday, following the generals’ Feb. 1 coup and deadly crackdown, with Washington calling it a response to “abhorrent violence and abuses.”

The U.S. Treasury department said its sanctions targeted Myanma Economic Holdings Public Company Ltd (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation Ltd (MEC).

Britain imposed similar sanctions on MEHL, citing the Myanmar military’s serious human rights violations against Rohingya Muslims.

U.S. 'horrified' by Myanmar violence, Blinken says after bloodiest day since military coup

nbc News

By Yuliya Talmazan
March 28, 2021, 

The courageous people of Burma reject the military’s reign of terror,” Blinken said after the worst day of violence in Myanmar since last month's coup..

 

The United States is “horrified” by the bloodshed in Myanmar, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday, after the country’s bloodiest day of protests since last month’s military coup.

The violent crackdown on demonstrators by Myanmar’s security forces showed that the junta will “sacrifice the lives of the people to serve the few,” Blinken said in a tweet.

Centre assures SC that Rohingya Muslims will not be deported

The Telegraph

Our Legal Correspondent 

New Delhi 

27.03.21

Solicitor-general Mehta, however, said that all illegal migrants in the country could not be granted refugee status and India could not become the world capital for refugees

The Centre on Friday assured the Supreme Court that Rohingya Muslims would not be deported unless the Myanmar government identifies and agrees to take them back.

The assurance was given to a bench headed by Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde by solicitor-general Tushar Mehta during the course of a hearing. The court was dealing with the plea of Mohd Samiullah, a Rohingya Muslim, seeking a stay on the deportation of Rohingya refugees from Jammu and Kashmir.

Myanmar: Airstrikes force villagers into jungle as 3,000 flee to Thailand

Sky News

David Mercer
News reporter @DavidMercerSky
Monday 29 March 2021

A luxury military party was reportedly held in Myanmar's capital on the deadliest day since last month's coup.

 
Man injured after Myanmar rickshaw grenade blast

Airstrikes that sent villagers fleeing into the jungle show the situation in Myanmar is "much worse", a humanitarian worker has told Sky News, as military leaders reportedly partied on the deadliest day of violence since last month's coup.

More gunfire has been reported today as people gathered for the funeral of one of at least 114 people said to have been killed by Myanmar security forces yesterday, including a five-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl.

Myanmar security forces kill over 100 protesters in 'horrifying' day of bloodshed

REUTERS
Reuters Staff
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA
MARCH 27, 2021

(Reuters) -Myanmar security forces killed 114 people, including some children, in a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters on Saturday, the bloodiest day of violence since last month’s military coup, news reports and witnesses said.

 

The killings, which took place on Armed Forces Day, drew strong renewed criticism from Western countries. British Ambassador Dan Chugg said the security forces had “disgraced themselves” and the U.S. envoy called the violence horrifying.

Military jets also launched air strikes on a village in territory controlled by an armed group from the Karen ethnic minority and at least two people were killed, a civil society group said.

Myanmar: UN chief condemns killing of civilians during brutal crackdown on protestors

UN News
27 March 2021
Peace and Security

Unsplash/Zinko Hein.Young man lights a candle during a night vigil in Yangon, Myanmar.

The UN chief condemned in the strongest terms, the killing of dozens of civilians, including children and young people, by security forces in Myanmar on Saturday.

In a statement issued by Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq, Secretary-General António Guterres said, “the continuing military crackdown…is unacceptable and demands a firm, unified and resolute international response”. 

As Myanmar’s military celebrated Armed Forces Day with a parade in the country’s capital, Naypyitaw, soldiers and police suppressed protesters during what has resulted in the highest daily death toll since demonstrations began last month.

“The military celebrated Armed Forces Day by committing mass murder against the people it should be defending”, tweeted Tom Andrews, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.

He added that the Civil Disobedience Movement is responding with “powerful weapons of peace” and called for the world “to respond in kind with and for the people of Myanmar”.