Myanmar security forces are engaged in a ‘clearance operation’ in the Rakhine State

Myanmar security forces killed three people while clearing a suspected Rohingya insurgent training camp in the mountains of the Rakhine State. In what is being called an ‘area clearance operation’, the encounter took place in the northwestern part of the State, where many tunnels, homemade weapons, huts, rations and other items used by the militants in the training, were found.

This is just another incident in the violence that the Myanmar military and the local Buddhist population have carried out against the community. More than a million Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions in the country: they need permission to marry, own animals and even need a permit to move around within their villages. Many have left, in the cover of darkness, and escaped to neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh and India, where they live as refugees.

This clamp down has intensified after insurgents attacked border guard posts in October, provoking a military crackdown in which hundreds were killed, more than 1,000 houses burned down and 75,000 people forced to flee to Bangladesh.

The United Nations has established a fact-finding mission to investigate crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the security forces during the counter-offensive. The administration of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has rejected the allegations and opposes the mission.

One man who attacked security forces inside the 80-feet (24.4-metre) tunnel with a machete was “killed in self-defence” on Tuesday, the paper said, while two men were killed yesterday.

(Reuters)