By HTET NAING ZAW
& MOE MYINT
2 April 2017
 |
| BGP member watching alert at the entry/exit point of Rohingya village in northern Arakan State: March 2017 |
NAYPYIDAW — A
Rohingya Muslim village official in Arakan State’s Buthidaung Township was
killed by a group of men two days after he was interviewed by journalists on a
press trip organized by the Ministry of Information (MOI), according to the
local police force.
Hamid Dullah, a
46-year-old assistant administrator of Tinn May village in Buthidaung Township
was sleeping at home on Friday night when men entered the house and killed him
by slitting his throat.
Hamid Dullah had
spoken to the media about military training organized by an armed group in Tinn
May village when journalists visited the location on the MOI-sponsored trip on
Wednesday.
A total of 18 local
and international journalists visited Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships this
week on a three-day trip organized by the government’s information team.
Hamid Dullah also
informed visiting journalists during the Wednesday interview that he had
received death threats online for collaborating with authorities regarding the
arrest of 17 locals alleged to have undergone the military training.
Maungdaw district
administrator U Ye Htut told the Irrawaddy that those who cooperated with
authorities and those who talked to media, diplomats and others were being
targeted by what appeared to be an organized network.
In late December
last year, a Muslim man named U Shuna Myar was brutally beheaded after he spoke
with 13 reporters on a government-sponsored trip to Ngakhura village, Maungdaw
Township.
Asked whether
security provisions had subsequently been planned or undertaken for
interviewees and others on government-sponsored trips in light of the potential
for reprisal activities, U Ye Htut maintained that it was “not possible” to
provide security for individual interviewees. Police had opened a case into the
death of Hamid Dullah, he said.
However, U Ye Htut
said that police were providing security to three Rohingya Muslim women in the
village of Kya Kaung Taung in Maungdaw Township who told journalists on
Thursday that they were raped by Burma Army soldiers during security operations
in northern Arakan State in January and later filed cases.
It remained unclear
whether the government and others would be reviewing their policies on the
organization and conduct of escorted trips by media, diplomats and others after
the latest murder.
Meanwhile, U Myint
Kyaw of the Myanmar Journalists Network (MJN) urged the government and media
organizations to avoid publishing the photos and personal information of
interviewees and detainees in the troubled region.
“It is dangerous.
Detainees may come to harm when they are released,” he said in relation to the
practice by state media of publishing images and details of those arrested in
the area.
The government and
media needed to be careful to avoid potential harm to news sources, U Myint
Kyaw added.
In a separate
incident not known to be connected to the recent media visit, police on
Saturday said that earlier that day a group of men abducted a village
administrator in the village of Thet Kaing Nya and killed two others.
Maungdaw border
police’s Brig-Gen Thura San Lwin had previously told media that Rohingya
Muslims who accepted National Verification Certificates (NVC) or were granted
full citizenship cards for Burma were sometimes threatened by an unknown armed
group.
The current NVC
process omits holders’ ethnicity and religion, which has led to a rejection of
the document by many Rohingya Muslim villagers, who demand this basic
recognition.
“Some Muslims
receive the NVC secretly and then hide out, away from their village, as they
are threatened,” Brig-Gen Thura San Lwin said.
According to
immigration officer U Than Shwe, 746,000 Muslims live in Buthidaung, Maungdaw,
and Taung Pyo Letwai. About 70,000 ethnic Arakanese live in the area.
Only 4,600 people
have accepted the NVC since the project was launched in 2014, according to the
official.
Earlier this week a
group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, previously named the
Faith Movement, or Harakah al-Yaqin, said in a statement that it was carrying
out armed resistance in northern Arakan state as ‘self-defense’. The group
denied links with any international terrorist group.
Under its previous
name, the group took credit for a series of armed attacks on 3 border outposts
in northern Arakan State on Oct 9, 2016, according to a report released in
December by the International Crisis Group.
The report also said
that the group had “apparently killed several informers.”