A Rakhine-based journalist and writer who was hospitalised after two men on a motorbike fired a metal spike at him from a slingshot has said he sees no point in asking the police to find his attackers.
Kyaw Lin, who is also known as Yaung Sone and has written for Myanmar Now, was talking on the phone in front of his house in Sittwe on Wednesday evening when the men attacked.
He sustained a minor injury to his chest, and has been receiving treatment at Sittwe Hospital, he told Myanmar Now.
It is the second time the writer has been attacked in Sittwe. In 2017 unknown assailants stabbed him in what he said may have been retaliation for an article he wrote on soaring land prices in the town.
He failed a case with the police but they have not found the attackers.
Officers from Sittwe police station visited him at the hospital on Thursday morning to ask if he wanted to open a case this time, but he declined.
“I did not file a case. They can’t even solve the case from 2017. It will be worse now,” Kyaw Lin said.
Kyaw Lin said he could not identify the men from Wednesday’s attack because it was dark, and there were no CCTV cameras nearby.
He recalls hearing one of the men say ‘that’s enough’ before they drove off.
He speculated that his attackers could be drug traffickers, since he writes commentaries on the drug trade in Rakhine, but stressed he does not have any evidence.
“I could not even see their faces clearly. It is hard for me to guess their organisation,”he said.
Kyaw Lin also criticised the Arakan Army after it was accused of a string of killings against people who were deemed to be traitors to the Rakhine nationalist movement.
His article was republished last year on the Burmese edition of Myanmar Now’s website under the title: “Is it easy to murder those who are called traitors?”
