Arakan News Agency
The Arakan National Party (ANP) urged Myanmar Army Commander-in-Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing to segregate Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State’s Maungdaw Township in the aftermath of killings of ethnic Mro people in the south of the township.
A seven-member ANP delegation visited the military chief in administrative capital Naypyitaw on Wednesday to discuss local concerns and called for heightened security measures in Arakan State.
“Ethnic [Rakhine] villages are surrounded by Bengali villages, so, we called for designating No-Bengali zones in the area,” U Khin Maung Latt of the ANP, who was at the meeting, told The Irrawaddy.
The stateless Rohingya Muslim population of 1.1 million in Arakan is referred to as “Bengali” by many in the state and the government, to infer that they are not an official ethnicity .
Tension has been running high recently between the two communities, who remain largely separated since inter-communal violence in 2012 and 2013 displaced around 140,000 people, the vast majority of them Muslim Rohingya.
Myanmar Army-led security operations, in response to attacks on border guard posts that killed nine police, drove 75,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh and “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity, according to the UN.
The commander-in-chief did not give a clear response to the request, according to attendees.
The Myanmar government on Sunday, in its investigation report into the Arakan security operation, repeated rejections of accusations of human rights abuses, calling reports of possible genocide “fabricated.”
The government continues to block a UN fact-finding mission tasked with investigating alleged atrocities—including extra judicial killings, arson, and rape—committed by Myanmar Army and police during the Arakan security campaign that began last year.
