10,000 people were displaced from Rakhine Myanmar last week

RAKHINE – United Nations (UN) Chief Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said 10,000 people had fled their homes in Rakhine, Myanmar, during fighting between government forces and ethnic rebels last week.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) say 2,800 people have been displaced according to initial estimates, but the actual number could be more because the impact of the conflict is not yet known.

Myanmar government and military spokesmen did not answer phone calls from Reuters for comment on the number of people displaced.

The fighting took place between the Myanmar military called Tatmadaw and the Arakan rebel Laskar.

“Estimates show that 10,000 residents have fled as Tatmadaw approached and fierce fighting ensued,” said Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Human Rights Council, a forum in Geneva, during a debate on Myanmar.

The UN agencies cited reports from various local partners and public sources to estimate the number of people displaced.

Access is very limited at Rakhine. Journalists are banned from the area, making it difficult to verify various reports from the region.

The report of displaced residents came after the local government warned dozens of village heads in Rathedaung that the military was planning a cleansing operation against the rebels and asked residents to leave.

A government spokesman later stated in a Facebook post that the evacuation order was given to the local government by border affairs officials but the order was revoked again.

The spokesman did not explain why but said the government had asked the military not to use the term clean operation.

Myanmar’s Border Ministry said it had issued evacuation orders but only in a few villages. (Also Read: European Union Depak of the United States from the Safe Travel List)

Cleanup operation is a term used by Myanmar authorities in 2017 in operations against insurgents from the Rohingya minority in Rakhine. (See Video: Helping Residents Economy, Karang Kiduna Gunung Kidul Establishes Alms Market)

At that time hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes. Refugees claimed the military carried out mass killings and arson. The accusation is denied by the Myanmar military. (See Infographics: China Becomes the World’s Largest Electronic Waste Importer)

(sya)

–