Myanmar troops kill six in Rakhine for suspected rebel links.

Aljazeera

3rd May 2019

Soldiers opened fire as a clash erupted with the detained villagers, according to member of parliament.

More recently, civilians have been caught up in clashes between the military and the Arakan Army [File:Min Kyi Thein/AP Photo]

Myanmar security forces have shot dead at least six people in the troubled western state of Rakhine after soldiers and police detained hundreds of people at a school, a military spokesperson said.

Six people killed, eight injured in Rakhine unrest.

MYANMAR TIMES

NYAN LYNN AUNG| 03 MAY 2019

Members of the Myanmar Red Cross Society carry a wounded man from a boat to Sittwe Hospital in Rakhine State on Thursday. Photo - EPA

Six people were killed and eight others injured during a disturbance at a school compound where hundreds of villagers were being detained by government forces in a village in Rathedaung township, Rakhine State, a senior spokesman of the Tatmadaw (military) said on Thursday.

Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun said the casualties happened before dawn on Thursday when some detainees crowded around the police officers guarding them, and the police fired warning shots to stop them.

Violence is returning to Burma’s Rakhine State

GLOBAL COMMENT
By Steve Shaw
Posted on May 1, 2019

 The farmers who had been tending to cows and seeing to paddy fields didn’t stand a chance when the peaceful evening on April 3 was shattered by two military attack helicopters.

By the time the bombs had stopped falling and the pointless barrage was over, at least seven were dead and another 18 injured.

Chinese Investment in Myanmar's Rakhine State Questioned

VOA

April 27, 2019
Libby Hogan 

Myanmar's defacto leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is welcoming businesses to invest in Rakhine State, more than a year and a half since a brutal military crackdown forced hundreds of thousands of minority Rohingya Muslims to flee into neighboring Bangladesh. Despite the push for investment, many residents in Rakhine State worry they will not see any of the benefits. Libby Hogan has this report from Kyaukpyu Beach in Rakhine State. 

-------------

UN aid chief: No progress so Rohingya can return to Myanmar.

Mail online
30 April 2019
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. humanitarian chief said Monday there has been "no progress" in dealing with the reasons why more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh from western Myanmar's Rakhine state.

Overview of the February 2019 3W - Rakhine State

Northern Rakhine refugees resist relocation to Bangladesh island.

MYANMAR TIMES
KYODO | 24 APR 2019

Bangladesh is facing a dilemma over the planned transfer of thousands of Muslims from northern Rakhine State crowded into makeshift camps along the country’s border with Myanmar to an uninhabited island in the Bay of Bengal.

To ease social, economic, environmental and internal security hazards, the government plans to relocate nearly 100,000 refugees from the camps in Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char, which is about an hour by motor boat from the nearest shore.

Arakan Army Leader Claims Myanmar Military Systematically Planned to ‘Crush’ His Group.

RADIO FREE ASIA 
2019-04-17

Arakan Army soldiers pass through a field in western Myanmar's Rakhine state in an undated photo.

Photo courtesy of Arakan Army News and Information

The leader of the Arakan Army based in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state said Wednesday that the military had systematically planned to “crush” his group ahead of hostilities that escalated between the two sides in January, and denied official claims of its involvement in terrorism and drug trafficking.

Maj. Gen. Tun Myat Naing, commander in chief of the AA, told reporters in Wa state's Panghsang township that crack troops from Myanmar’s military received special training more than a year ahead of being deployed to Rakhine state, where they engaged with AA soldiers in early January, following AA attacks on police outposts in northern Rakhine that killed 13 officers.

Myanmar: Full Scale Civil War In Rakhine State – Analysis

eurasiareview

April 14, 2019 SAAG 0 Comments

By SAAG, By S.Chandrasekharan

A burnt down house in a Rohingya village in northern Rakhine State. File photo by Moe Zaw (VOA), Wikipedia Commons.

The situation in the ethnic front is rather grim, with a full scale civil war going on in Rakhine state where the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Army are engaged in heavy fighting resulting in the civil administration coming to a stand still within two months of the ongoing conflict.

Is Bangladesh Really Interested in Justice on Rakhine Issue?

The Irrawaddy
12 April 2019
By NYEIN MAUNG

ICOE members in Maungdaw, northern Rakhine State, in August 2018. / ICOE

Bangladesh has finally allowed the Independent Commission of Enquiry (ICOE) to visit the country. According to a press release on the ICOE’s website, the Bangladeshi foreign minister has agreed in principle to meet with the commission next month. What is unclear—and frankly, this must be the crux of the issue—is whether Bangladeshi authorities will allow the ICOE to conduct evidence gathering in Cox’s Bazar. No information on this is available on the ICOE’s website.

Myanmar rebels storm police base in Rakhine state amid fresh clashes in temple town.

REUTERS
APRIL 10th, 2019

YANGON (Reuters) - Arakan Army rebels overran a police base in Rakhine state, killing two officers and one of their wives, the Myanmar government said on Wednesday, as fresh fighting broke out in a historic Buddhist temple town popular with tourists.

The Information Ministry said around 200 insurgents stormed a police headquarters in Mrauk U before being repelled, but that they abducted four women and three children as they left.

President sets up new committee on Rakhine.

MYANMAR TIMES
NYAN LYNN AUNG | 10 APR 2019

President U Win Myint has established a new committee on Rakhine State to help ensure peace and stability in the region.

Members of the Assistance Committee on Rakhine State Peace and Stability arrived in Rakhine’s capital, Sittwe, on Tuesday to meet officials and local people, according to U San Kyaw Hla, speaker of the Rakhine parliament. 

New curfew imposed in Rakhine State.

MYANMAR TIMES 
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 03, 2019

NYAN LYNN AUNG

Rakhine ethnic people travel by motorbike in Sittwe, Rakhine State, Myanmar. Photo - EPA

A curfew was imposed from 9pm to 5am in five townships in northern Rakhine State on Tuesday following clashes between the Tatmadaw (military) and Arakan Army (AA), according to the state government.

The state issued a statement signed by Security and Border Affairs Minister Colonel Phone Tint on Monday that said the curfew had been ordered to enforce the administration, rules and regulations of the government as well as to protect the state’s businesses and economy.

“There is a public curfew in the late evening,” said a state official who asked not to be named.

Two Villagers Shot Dead in Latest Fighting in Myanmar’s Rakhine State

RADIO FREE ASIA

2019-03-29

A Myanmar villager is rushed to the hospital after being wounded by gunfire in Outthagan village, Mrauk-U township, western Myanmar's Rakhine state, March 29, 2019.
Photo courtesy of the Mrauk-U Ga Yunar Hlaing blood donors group

An armed clash between Myanmar soldiers and rebel Arakan Army (AA) fighters in a village in Mrauk-U township in western Myanmar’s violence-ridden Rakhine state on Friday left two villagers dead and seven others injured, local residents and a Rakhine lawmaker said.

The Arakan Army and the ‘storm of the revolution’.

Frontier
MYANMAR

Friday, March 29, 2019

Arakan Army deputy chief Brigadier-General Nyo Tun Aung during an interview at the group's base near Laiza. (Hkun Lat)

The deputy leader of the Arakan Army tells Frontier in the border town of Laiza in Kachin State about the group’s shift in focus to Rakhine State and why the Rakhine people may have to endure more suffering in the years ahead.

By YE MON | FRONTIER

Photos HKUN LAT

THE SECURITY situation in Rakhine State continues to worsen as fighting between a defiant Arakan Army and the Tatmadaw spreads to more townships, claiming more lives on both sides and displacing thousands of frightened and anxious villagers.

Shortly before the latest flare-up in fighting, Frontier interviewed the Arakan Army’s deputy chief, Brigadier-General Nyo Tun Aung, near Laiza, the town on the Chinese border where the Kachin Independence Organisation has its headquarters.

Fighting in Myanmar’s Rakhine Estimated to Have Displaced 22,000 People

RFA 
2019-03-27

Members of the Arakan National Party conduct a field visit to a displacement camp in western Myanmar's Rakhine state in an undated photo.Photo courtesy of Htun Aung Kyaw

Intense fighting this week between Myanmar forces and the rebel Arakan Army (AA) in Rakhine state's Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships has displaced 2,000 villagers, raising the prospect of additional food and water shortages in the war-torn region, relief and disaster management workers said Wednesday.

Myanmar -- investors should be cautious but take the risk.

         NIKKEI

ASIAN REVIEW

MARCH 27, 2019

If government pursues humanitarian agenda, foreign partners can back projects, even in Rakhine State.

Simon Tay

Aung San Suu Kyi told investors that "much of Rakhine's economic potential still remains untapped." © Reuters

A humanitarian crisis that has been brewing at the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh since 2016 is reaching a critical point. At Cox's Bazar, just inside Bangladesh, an estimated 740,000 displaced Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar's Rakhine State are encamped in temporary shelters, hoping that the international community will take them in as refugees or facilitate their safe return to the homes they claim in Myanmar.

Tatmadaw likens Arakan Army demands to ‘a child daydreaming’

Frontier 
MYANMAR
Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Major-General Tun Tun Nyi attends an earlier press conference in Yangon on February 23. (Thuya Zaw | Frontier)

By SU MYAT MON | FRONTIER

YANGON — The Tatmadaw has blamed the Arakan Army for an escalation in fighting in Rakhine State, with military spokespeople accusing the armed group of harming civilians and labelling its demands “impossible”.

“With the thoughts of a child daydreaming, some of the armed groups are asking for what is impossible,” Major-General Soe Naing Oo, chair of the Tatmadaw’s True News Information Team, said at a press briefing in Nay Pyi Taw on Monday to discuss recent fighting with the AA. “Don’t ask for impossible things,” he said.

Tatmadaw warns public not to believe Arakan Army.

MYANMAR TIMES
CHAN THAR | TUESDAY, 26 MAR 2019

The Tatmadaw (military) has not killed any civilians or damaged any of their property during its clashes with the Arakan Army (AA) in Rakhine State, Major General Tun Tun Nyi of the True News agency said.

“Everyone can see that the AA is trying to create racial conflict between the Rakhine and Bamar races. (Government spokesperson) U Zaw Htay has said that the situation in Rakhine has become a threat to the Union. The Tatmadaw has taken measures against the insurgents, but we are not always in a position protect the lives and property of people. We urge people to be cautious and not be exploited by the insurgents,” he said.

Gunfire wounds six in temple town.

THE Star ONLINE
Wednesday, 20 Mar 2019

YANGON: At least six people were wounded in firing as Myanmar soldiers hunted ethnic Rakhine insurgents in the western town of Mrauk U, residents said, while the military issued a statement saying a convoy was ambushed entering the historic temple town.