Clashes between the Burmese army and rebels have taken place in Rakhine State, in western Burma.
Clashes between the Burmese army and rebels took place last week in the state of Rakhine (west), a region shaken for years by violence but remained calm since the coup d’etat of February 2021.
The Arakan Army (AA), one of the most powerful armed militias in the country, has been fighting for decades to obtain more autonomy for the Buddhist population of the region (known as Rakhine or Arakanese).
In November 2020, the Tatmadaw, the Burmese armed forces, had agreed on a ceasefire with the AA. Shortly after the February 1, 2021 putsch against former civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, she reiterated this commitment.
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But on Friday the army entered an AA base near the border with Bangladesh, and fighting raged for about three hours, a spokesman for the ethnic rebel faction told AFP. , on condition of anonymity. One of the AA members is dead, he says.
“There is a strong military tension which can escalate at any time,” he noted. “One wonders if the army is seeking to destabilize Rakhine State, which has remained stable and calm until now.”
Bloody campaign against the Rohingyas
Zaw Min Tun, spokesman for the junta, confirmed to AFP the clashes, indicating that several members of the security forces were killed or injured. But he blamed the attack on a group of insurgents from the Muslim Rohingya minority.
“We are investigating the presence of the AA on site,” he said.
Rakhine State has been a powder keg for decades.
In 2017, the army launched a bloody campaign against the Rohingyas there. Several thousand of them were killed and more than 700,000 fled to neighboring Bangladesh, a tragedy described as “genocide” by UN investigators.
In 2019 and 2020, clashes had intensified between the military and the Arakan Army, displacing some 200,000 people. NGOs have raised potential war crimes.
Burma has plunged into violence since the coup a year ago and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.
Citizen militias backed by ethnic rebel factions have taken up arms against the regime and the generals are carrying out a bloody crackdown on their opponents: more than 1,500 civilians have been killed and nearly 9,000 are currently in detention, according to a group local monitoring.
Last week, the UN Security Council adopted a unanimous statement calling for “an immediate cessation of all forms of violence” in Burma.
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