One man was killed and another arrested at a military checkpoint while travelling by motorcycle to Sittwe, Rakhine State, on Sunday morning, according to local sources.
Twenty-year-old Zawmeir Huson and another man were on their way to the state capital from their home village of Dar Paing when they were stopped and questioned by a member of the Police Battalion No. 36 in Bu Mei ward at around 7am.
Citing eyewitness accounts, two locals from Bu Mei told Myanmar Now that the junta officer on duty stopped the men, asked to see their Covid-19 clearance documents, and later shot Zawmeir Huson, the driver.
“We only heard that a young man was shot dead,” one of the ward residents said.
The other Bu Mei local explained that the men were ethnic Rohingya, and while they tried to comply with the police check, they had difficulty communicating in either the Burmese or Rakhine languages which were spoken by the officer on duty.
“He couldn’t properly answer the police officer’s questions,” the local said. “The police officer threatened him by putting his gun in his mouth. He was later killed when the officer shot him in the neck while he was calling home to say that he had been detained.”
Myanmar Now has been unable to contact Zawmeir Huson’s family or to verify the locals’ accounts of the incident, but learned that the deceased’s body was sent to Sittwe hospital.
The identity of the other man travelling with Zawmeir Huson could not be confirmed, but he was believed to be in junta custody at the time of reporting.
Rakhine State-based media outlet DMG reported that a 20-year-old police private shot Zawmeir Huson with a BA-94 submachine gun.
Photos of the scene shared on social media show the young man lying dead on the ground with a bullet wound to the left side of his neck.
“We don’t have any security at all. They are just killing and shooting at us as they please. It feels as if there is no one to protect us,” another Rohingya youth from the area told Myanmar Now.
Locals have reported multiple recent casualties caused by the military in Rakhine State, particularly as clashes with the Arakan Army escalate in the northern townships. In late August, a woman and child were killed and 10 more civilians injured during heavy shelling by junta forces near Mrauk-U, and another woman was killed in Maungdaw, also by a Myanmar army artillery explosion.
The military has not released any information on its actions in the region.
