The government has ordered ethnic Rakhine people who recently settled in burned-out villages in northern Rakhine State to relocate, and has hit the founders of the new settlements with criminal charges. The Maungdaw Township administrator, who conveyed the order, blamed it on international “pressure” on the government.
The villages were largely deserted after their Muslim Rohingya residents fled a sweeping military crackdown on Rohingya militants that started in August last year.
Buddhist Rakhine from Rathedaung and Thandwe townships, further south in Rakhine State, had built new settlements in at least three deserted villages in Maungdaw Township, close to the border with Bangladesh, where around a million Rohingya are now in refugee camps. The settlers say ethnic Rakhine people originally lived in the area.
Settlements in Thin Baw Gwe village, housing around 200 Rakhine settlers, was the first to be dismantled under the orders of the township’s General Administration Department. The status of the other new settlements is currently unclear.
The township administrator told a meeting of government officers, residents and state parliamentarians on 8 July that “international organisations” had “put pressure” on the Myanmar government to demolish newly built settlements to leave room for refugees returning from Bangladesh, according Rakhine State parliament member U Maung Ohn, who was present at the meeting.
Myanmar and Bangladesh reached an agreement at the end of last year to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees within two years, but only a handful have returned to Myanmar so far, and even then under disputed circumstances. Myanmar last month signed an agreement with United Nations agencies to assist repatriation.
Police and fire fighters began to demolish the newly built houses in Than Baw Gwe village on the afternoon of 9 July, according to Ko Aung Naing, one of three official founders of the new settlement.
Government officers initially asked the settlers to move to Inn Din village, a five-minute drive from Than Baw Gwe in Maungdaw Township, and promised to supply rations, Maung Ohn said.
Inn Din, now largely empty of its Muslim-majority population, is where the Myanmar army admitted to murdering ten Muslim men in September of last year. A military court sentenced seven soldiers to 10 years in prison with hard labour for the killings, according to a military press release.
However, the settlers refused to move to Inn Din, saying instead they would return to their original villages further south in Rakhine State.
“We will go back to our own places. If the government is unhappy and asks us to leave, we will all leave,” said Aung Naing.
He and the two other official founders of the settlement have been charged under Penal Code section 505(b) for failing to report its establishment to the government.
Aung Naing said they appeared in court on 9 July and were granted bail, with a hearing scheduled for 15 July.
Members of the Rakhine State government and the Maungdaw Township administration refused to comment on the events.
The settlers say they are not connected to the Ancillary Committee for Reconstruction of Rakhine National Territory in the Western Frontier, known locally as the CRR, a private scheme by Rakhine nationalists to settle poor ethnic Rakhine families from further south in the state, or further afield, to areas of northern Rakhine where Muslims have fled.
