This photo shows a destroyed house and burned trees following fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Arakan Army (AA) ethnic minority armed group in the Rakhine State.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Myanmar’s junta has ordered thousands of people living outside a State capital threatened by ethnic rebels to leave their homes and head into the city, residents said on June 14.

Sittwe city is one of the few holdouts for junta troops in western Rakhine State, where the military has lost swathes of territory to the Arakan Army (AA) in recent weeks.

The AA, which says it is fighting for autonomy for the State’s ethnic Rakhine population, has vowed to capture Sittwe, home to an India-backed deep sea port and around 2,00,000 people.

Residents of 15 villages around Sittwe were given five days to leave their homes and move to the state capital, a resident of one of the villages told AFP.

“The army threatened to shoot and kill if they found someone after the deadline” which expires on June 15, she said, requesting anonymity due to fear of arrest.

A resident of Sittwe put the number of villages ordered to evacuate at around 10, saying that residents had been told “to move out for security reasons” by June 15.

The villages were home to around 3,500 people, the Sittwe resident said, requesting anonymity.

They added the military had not arranged for temporary shelters in Sittwe.

“People have to move to their relatives’ homes from other villages,” they said.

Local media also reported the order to evacuate villages in the area.

AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.

In November, the AA launched a wave of attacks on the military across Rakhine, shattering a ceasefire that had largely held since the military’s 2021 coup.

It has since seized territory along the border with India and Bangladesh, piling further pressure on the junta as it battles opponents elsewhere across the Southeast Asian country.

It has also held the town of Pauktaw, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) from Sittwe, since January.

AFP images from the town last month showed gutted buildings, vacant windows and blocks bombed to rubble by the fighting, which has emptied the fishing port of its residents.

This month, the AA said junta troops had killed more than 70 civilians in a raid on Byain Phyu village, north of Sittwe.

The junta said the claim was “propaganda” and accused AA fighters of launching attacks on Sittwe from surrounding villages.

Phone and internet services have been all but cut off across Rakhine State, making it difficult to verify reports of violence.

File photo of Myanmar’s Rakhine state showing Rohingya refugees gathering behind a barbed-wire fence in a temporary settlement setup.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Intense fighting in Myanmar’s Rakhine State poses a grave threat to civilians, the United Nations warned on April 19, as it urged international pressure to prevent more “horrendous persecution” of ethnic Rohingya.

U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk said clashes between the military and the Arakan Army, alongside tensions being fuelled between the Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine communities, meant there was a serious risk of a repeat of previous atrocities.

Also read: The Myanmar conflict is a regional problem

“The alarm bells are ringing, and we must not allow there to be a repeat of the past,” Turk said in a statement.

More than one million Rohingya fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state to refugee camps in Bangladesh in 2017 after a military clampdown on the Muslim group in which many were killed.

Thousands still risk their lives each year trying to get away from Myanmar on flimsy boats trying to get to Malaysia or Indonesia.

“Countries with influence on the Myanmar military and armed groups involved must act now to protect all civilians in Rakhine state and prevent another episode of horrendous persecution of the Rohingya,” Turk said.

Clashes have rocked Rakhine state again since the Arakan Army attacked security forces in November, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since the military’s 2021 coup.

The AA is one of several armed ethnic minority groups in Myanmar’s border regions.

Turk’s office said that since the informal ceasefire broke down, 15 of Rakhine’s 17 townships had been affected by fighting, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, and taking the number of displaced to well over 300,000.

“Rakhine state has once again become a battleground involving multiple actors, and civilians are paying a heavy price, with Rohingya at particular risk,” said Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights.

“What is particularly disturbing is that whereas in 2017, the Rohingya were targeted by one group, they are now trapped between two armed factions who have a track record of killing them. We must not allow the Rohingya to be targeted again.”

Myanmar’s ruling junta came to power in the February 2021 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government, ending a 10-year experiment with democracy and plunging the Southeast Asian nation into bloody turmoil.

The junta is struggling to crush resistance to its rule by long-established ethnic rebel groups and newer pro-democracy forces.