With Rohingya gone, Myanmar's ethnic Rakhine move into new Muslim-free ‘buffer zone’
New arrivals are moving to parts of the state that were ‘cleared’ after a swift military crackdown on the minority Rohingya
Buddhist flags hang limply from bamboo poles at the entrance to Koe Tan Kauk, a “model” village for ethnic Rakhine migrants shuttled north to repopulate an area once dominated by Rohingya Muslims.
The new arrivals are moving to parts of Rakhine state mostly “cleared” of its Rohingya residents, whose villages were bulldozed and reduced to muddy stains on a landscape of lush farmland.
The Rakhine migrants, who come from the poor but relatively stable south, are – for now – few in number.
But they carry great expectations as the pioneers of a donor-led “Rakhinisation” plan to upend the demography of the once majority-Muslim area.
“We were really afraid of those Kalars and didn’t plan to come here,” Chit San Eain, said a 28-year-old who has moved with her husband and toddler into a basic hut in Koe Tan Kauk, using a pejorative term for Muslims.
“But now that they are no longer here, we have the chance to meet again with our relatives who live up here,” she added, the ruins of a Rohingya settlement lying a few kilometres away.