This photo taken on July 9, 2024, shows displaced people from Lashio standing near their car trying to cross a flooded area as they flee their homes following clashes between Myanmar’s military and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, on the road from Lashio to Taunggyi in Myanmar’s northern Shan State.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Myanmar ethnic minority fighters said on July 10 they had seized a town along a key trade highway to China following days of clashes, in another blow to the military.

Northern Shan State has been rocked by fighting since late last month, when an alliance of ethnic armed groups renewed an offensive against the military along the highway to China’s Yunnan province.

The clashes have shredded a Beijing-brokered truce that in January halted an offensive by the alliance of the Arakan Army (AA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).

The town of Naungcho “is totally ours”, General Tar Bhone Kyaw of the TNLA said.

Earlier on Wednesday, a military source said that ethnic minority fighters were in control of “most” of the town.

AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.

Naungcho is around 50 km down the highway from the former British hill station of Pyin Oo Lwin, home to the military’s elite officer training academy.

Another road from the town leads to Taunggyi, the capital of Shan state.

TNLA fighters were also inside the town of Lashio, home to the junta’s northeastern command, the TNLA said.

Its forces had briefly captured a battallion command near the city but had been forced to retreat when the military launched air strikes, said Tar Bhone Kyaw.

On Tuesday the junta said 18 civilians in Lashio had been killed and 24 wounded in shelling, rocket and drone attacks by the alliance.

The military has carried out several air strikes around the town of about 150,000 people, according to residents.

Fleeing in convoys

On Tuesday, Lashio residents piled into cars weighed down with belongings and navigated potholed and monsoon-soaked dirt roads in a bid to flee the fighting, AFP images showed.

On Monday around 45 people crowded onto a boat to be taken across a river swollen by the monsoon rains.

Myanmar’s borderlands are home to myriad ethnic armed groups who have battled the military since independence from Britain in 1948 for autonomy and control of lucrative resources.

Some have given shelter and training to newer “People’s Defence Forces” (PDFs) that have sprung up to battle the military after it ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021.

In recent days, PDF fighters have battled junta forces in Madaya township, around an hour north of second city Mandalay.

Amid the renewed fighting last week, top junta general Soe Win travelled to China to discuss security cooperation along their shared border.

China is a major ally and arms supplier to the junta, but analysts say Beijing also maintains ties with Myanmar’s armed ethnic groups holding territory near its border.

Estelle knew she had to flee Myanmar. The military junta had just announced it would introduce conscription to bolster its forces against myriad armed groups challenging its power, and she was terrified she would be forced to fight.

The former government worker, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, is among thousands of people who have decided to leave their homes since the mandatory military service law was announced in February, and then came into effect in April.

Some people have risked their lives to trek through jungles and ford rivers, crossing into neighbouring countries without documentation because the military has made it increasingly difficult to leave through formal channels.

Others have fled to areas under the control of armed groups fighting against the military, or have joined these groups themselves.

The mass exodus is taking place as the military regime faces its most serious crisis since it took power in a 2021 coup, which sparked widespread protests.

The street demonstrations, which were met with a brutal crackdown, morphed into an armed resistance movement that has seen newer anti-coup forces join with many of Myanmar’s autonomy-seeking ethnic armed groups, posing the most significant challenge to the military in decades.

The UN Human Rights Office says more than 5,000 people have been killed by the military since the coup, including more than 1,000 women. Around 3 million people have been displaced.

Estelle had to sneak out of the country because she had joined a countrywide Civil Disobedience Movement after the coup and faced international travel restrictions as a result.

She and a friend paid the equivalent of around $280 each in Myanmar’s kyat currency to travel by car from the city of Mawlamyine to the border with Thailand and then hired a smuggler to take them across the Moei River.

“It was just the two of us girls travelling with a man we didn’t know,” Estelle said. “We were scared we would be arrested or trafficked.”

Worth the risk

But they took the risk anyway despite the fact that, at 36, Estelle falls outside the age range for conscription. A few days after its initial announcement, the junta also pledged to exempt women for the time being.

But Estelle is not going back.

“That’s just words,” she said. “We never know when the time will come when they will make difficulties for us.”

The junta has been accused by Western governments of systematic atrocities and excessive use of air strikes and artillery in civilian areas. It has dismissed that as misinformation and says it is targeting “terrorists”.

In a report published in July, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said women’s rights organisations had identified increasing reports of the trafficking of women and girls following the enactment of the conscription law.

“Women are using dangerous channels to flee the country amid fears of conscription, putting them at high risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Conscription exemptions for married women also raise the risk of early and forced marriage for girls and women,” Mr. Andrews wrote.

Severe hardships

The military call-up comes on top of an economic crisis that has sent the currency spiralling lower and caused unemployment to surge. The World Bank says women have been particularly hard hit by the economic downturn that followed the COVID-19 pandemic and the coup.

“There is no safe place for women and girls … they have to survive in risky situations,” she said.

Women were at the forefront of resistance to the 2021 coup and have also joined armed groups fighting the military. Around one-fifth of the 20,000 political prisoners in Myanmar are female, according to a local rights group.

Women from the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, have also faced fresh hardships after years of abuses.

Although Rohingya are not eligible for conscription under the law because they are denied citizenship, the military has conscripted more than 1,000 Rohingya men and boys since February using methods including abduction, threats and false promises of citizenship, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

And this has had an effect on women and the economic welfare of their households.

“Families are worried … Women don’t want their husbands to go,” said Sofia, a Rohingya women’s protection specialist in Rakhine State, who also used a pseudonym for security reasons.

The International Organization for Migration in Thailand said it had seen a steady increase in people crossing the border from Myanmar, including a nearly 30% increase between January and February. Women were more likely than men to enter without official documentation, it added.

But it’s not just military conscription that some women have to fear.

In the eastern Shan State, at least three ethnic armed groups have announced mandatory service policies in recent months. Two of these groups conscript women.

Fear of being conscripted into an ethnic armed group drove 16-year-old Christine, who also did not give her real name for security reasons, from her home in Lashio township in February after one of the armed groups there told her grandmother that Christine and her siblings would have to serve in its forces. They fled the next day and Christine headed to Malaysia.

She is now in Kuala Lumpur where she is terrified of being arrested by immigration officials.

A powerful ethnic armed group fighting Myanmar’s military government in the country’s western state of Rakhine claimed on May 18, 2024, to have seized a town near the border with Bangladesh, marking the latest in a series of victories for foes of the country’s military government. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Rohingya activists accused a Myanmar ethnic armed group on May 22 of displacing thousands of the persecuted minority in western Rakhine state, after the United States said it was troubled by increasing violence.

Clashes have rocked Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked junta forces in November, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since a military coup in 2021.

The AA says it is fighting for more autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine population in the state, which is also home to around 6,00,000 members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Rakhine in 2017 during a crackdown by the military that is now the subject of a United Nations genocide court case.

A joint statement released by several Rohingya organisations based abroad said AA fighters forced Rohingya residents to leave the town of Buthidaung last week and then burned and looted their homes.

It said the Rohingya were then directed by the fighters into areas controlled by the AA.

The statement called for the AA to end “forced displacement and human rights violations” against the Rohingya.

The AA said it had seized Buthidaung last week, the latest victory it has claimed against the junta in Rakhine state.

It said it had warned residents of the town to leave and had subsequently been “assisting people in moving to safer areas” but did not give any details.

It accused the junta of destroying Buthidaung and of inciting “racial and religious violence” by recruiting “Bengali Muslims” to fight the AA.

Rohingya view the word “Bengali” as a slur that implies they are interlopers in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

The Rohingya groups’ statement also accused the junta of conscripting “several thousand” Rohingya to fight and of using them as “cannon fodder”.

The junta has not responded to requests for comment on the latest clashes around Buthidaung.

AFP has also contacted the AA for comment.

The latest clashes have killed hundreds and displaced at least 3,00,000 people across Rakhine since they began in November, according to the United Nations.

Internet and phone networks are all but cut across swaths of the state, making communication difficult.

‘Stoking tensions’

The U.S. State Department cited on Tuesday reports of towns being burned and residents including Rohingya people being displaced.

The U.N. human rights chief issued a similar warning at the weekend, saying that tensions were high between ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya and were being stoked by Myanmar’s military junta.

“The military’s previous acts of genocide and other crimes against humanity targeting Rohingya, in addition to its history of stoking intercommunal tensions in Rakhine… underscore the grave dangers to civilians,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

“The current increased violence and intercommunal tensions also raise the risks of further atrocities occurring,” he added.

Mr. Miller called on the junta and all armed groups to protect civilians and allow unhindered humanitarian access.

The AA is one of several armed ethnic minority groups in Myanmar’s border regions, many of which have battled the military since independence from Britain in 1948 over autonomy and control of lucrative resources.

Clashes between the AA and the military in 2019 displaced around 2,00,000 people.

A powerful armed ethnic group in Myanmar said on Sunday it had won control over a town in the western state of Rakhine after weeks of fighting, denying accusations it had targeted members of the Muslim-minority Rohingya during the offensive.

Khine Thu Kha, a spokesman for the Arakan Army (AA), said its soldiers had taken Buthidaung near Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh, marking another battlefield defeat for the ruling junta that is fighting opposition groups on multiple fronts.

“We have conquered all the bases in Buthidaung and also took over the town yesterday,” Khine Thu Kha told Reuters by telephone.

Some Rohingya activists accuse the AA of targeting the community during the assault on Buthidaung and surrounding areas, forcing many of them to flee for safety.

“AA troops came into downtown, forced the people to leave their homes and started torching houses,” Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition advocacy group told Reuters, based on what he said were eyewitness accounts.

“While the town was burning, I spoke with several people I have known and trusted for years. They all testified that the arson attack was done by the AA.”

Reuters could not independently verify the conflicting accounts. A junta spokesman did not respond to a call seeking comment.

Rohingya have faced persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for decades. After escaping a military-led crackdown in 2017, nearly a million of them live crammed into refugee camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar.

Junta’s Biggest Challenge

Myanmar has been in turmoil since a 2021 military coup, which led to the rise of the resistance fighting alongside long-established ethnic minority rebel groups.

The conflict has escalated since October, when an alliance of ethnic armies including the AA launched a major offensive near the Chinese border, taking swathes of territory from the better-armed junta and presenting its biggest challenge since taking power.

The junta has lost control of around half its 5,280 military positions, including outposts, bases and headquarters, according to one estimate.

The AA’s Khine Thu Kha said junta aircraft and Muslim insurgent groups aligned with the military had set fire to parts of Buthidaung, which had a population of around 55,000 people, according to the most recent government census available, from 2014.

“The burning of Buthidaung is due to the air strikes from the junta’s jet fighter before our troops entered the town,” he said.

Aung Kyaw Moe, a Rohingya civil society activist and a deputy minister in Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, said Rohingya residents had been asked by the AA to leave Buthidaung but had responded that they had nowhere to go, leaving them trapped when the offensive occurred.

“Since about 10 p.m. last night up to this early morning, Buthidaung town had been burning and now only ashes remain,” he told Reuters.

Rohingya residents fled to the field and there may casualties, he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Many people have been killed in an artillery strike at a camp for internally displaced people in Myanmar’s Kachin State, among them women, children and the elderly, local media reports and sources in the area said on Tuesday.

Reuters could not immediately verify the reports. The Kachin media and local sources said the incident took place close to midnight on Monday, a few kilometres from a military camp run by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which is in conflict with Myanmar’s ruling military.

The KIA could not immediately be reached for confirmation. The reports were shared on social media by a local activist and a minister in Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, who did not immediately respond to request for confirmation. A spokesperson for Myanmar’s junta was not immediately reachable.

She is appealing dozens of convictions for crimes ranging from treason and bribery to violations of the telecommunications law.
| Photo Credit: AP

The Supreme Court in military-ruled Myanmar has rejected appeals against six corruption convictions for the jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, according to media reports.

Suu Kyi, in detention since the military toppled her government in a 2021 coup, faces 27 years in prison. She is appealing dozens of convictions for crimes ranging from treason and bribery to violations of the telecommunications law.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has denied wrongdoing.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup and the junta’s crackdown on opponents, with thousands jailed or killed. Many governments have called for the unconditional release of Suu Kyi and thousands of other political prisoners in the Southeast Asian country.

A junta spokesperson did not answer calls from Reuters seeking comment on Sunday.

The court in August rejected five appeals by Suu Kyi on illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, sedition and violating coronavirus restrictions.

The junta recently granted a partial pardon that shaved six years off her prison sentence, a move that critics, including her son, said meant nothing.

File picture of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi

Myanmar’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is ailing and a request for an outside physician to see her has been denied by the country’s military rulers, a source familiar with the matter and the shadow government loyal to her said on Tuesday.

The 78-year-old Nobel laureate instead has been treated by a prisons department doctor.

“She was suffering swelling in her gums and could not eat well and is feeling light-headed along with vomiting,” said the source, who declined to be identified due to fear of arrest.

Myanmar military junta spokesperson did not comment.

The Southeast Asian country has been in turmoil since early 2021, when the military overthrew Ms. Suu Kyi’s elected government and cracked down on opponents of military rule, with thousands jailed or killed.

Ms. Suu Kyi is facing 27 years of detention related to 19 criminal offences. She denies all the charges for which she was convicted, ranging from incitement and election fraud to corruption, and has been appealing against them.

In July, she was moved to house arrest from prison in the capital, Naypyitaw.

Myanmar’s exiled National Unity Government, set up by opponents of military rule and the remains of Ms. Suu Kyi’s previous government, said the healthcare and security of political detainees is the responsibility of the military junta.

“The international community should pressure the junta for the healthcare and security of all the political detainees including Aung San Suu Kyi,” Kyaw Zaw, spokesperson for the National Unity Government, told Reuters.

Many governments have called for the unconditional release of Ms. Suu Kyi and thousands of other political prisoners, and some, including the United States, European Union and Great Britain, have targeted the Southeast Asian country’s military with sanctions.