Myanmar army shelling villages in Rakhine ‘without any regard for human rights’
- Myanmar’s borderlands are wracked by several insurgencies who fight in the name of the country’s patchwork of ethnic or religious minorities
Myanmar soldiers are shelling villages, detaining civilians and blocking aid as part of a new crackdown in Rakhine state by some of the army units implicated in atrocities against the Rohingya, a rights group says.
Villagers and local activists in the northern Myanmar state have told Amnesty International that artillery or mortar shells are being fired in the vicinity of townships and people are returning to abandoned communities to find properties looted and damaged.
Military activity in the restive state has intensified since early January when an armed ethnic Rakhine group called the Arakan Army attacked four police posts, reportedly killing 13 officers.
More than 5,200 people have been displaced by the subsequent fighting, the UN says, and dozens of families have reportedly fled into neighbouring Bangladesh.
Nearly 1 million Muslim Rohingya people are sheltering in sprawling refugee camps in southern Bangladesh, but most of those displaced in the latest fighting belong to Buddhist ethnic minorities who, unlike the Rohingya, are recognised as Burmese citizens.
The Arakan Army is made up predominantly of members of the Rakhine ethnic minority who are fighting for independence for the coastal state that was an autonomous kingdom until the 18th century.