Residents of the Muslim village of Gozirbill near the Rakhine town of Maungdaw pose for a photograph after their escape from Myanmar, at a refugee camp in Teknaf of southern Cox’s Bazar district in November 2016. (AFP) |
A committee tasked with implementing the recommendations
of Kofi Annan’s Rakhine State Advisory Commission says it has made progress
over the past six months, highlighting the planned closure of three IDP camps
in the state.
By MRATT KYAW THU | FRONTIER
ALMOST SIX months after the Advisory Commission on
Rakhine State submitted its final report to the Myanmar government, a committee
tasked with implementing the recommendations has submitted its first report to
the government.
The Implementation Committee on Recommendations of
Advisory Commission on Rakhine State was established in September 2017, and is
headed by Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Dr Win Myat Aye.
The commission was formed just weeks after attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation
Army on August 25 plunged the state into even deeper turmoil. It has been
tasked with implementing the recommendations of the advisory commission, which
was headed by former UN secretary-general Mr Kofi Annan, and the Maungdaw
Region Investigation Commission, which was led by vice president U Myint Swe.
On February 19, the implementation committee, in
cooperation with the government’s Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance,
Resettlement and Development in Rakhine, submitted its report to the
government, in which it highlighted some of its achievements in recent months.
The report, which was published on the Facebook page of
the government’s Information Committee, said that plans are underway to close
three camps hosting internally displaced persons in Rakhine State. The camps
house people who were forced to flee their homes when violence engulfed the
state in 2012, displacing an estimated 140,000 people, mostly Muslim Rohingya.
The three camps slated for closure are at Aung Mingalar,
in downtown Sittwe, Thet Kay Pyin on the outskirts of Sittwe, and Taungpaw Camp
in Myebon Township. It also said that the government is repairing and
refurbishing 50 shelters at IDP camps in Sittwe and 12 individual houses in
Ramree Township.
Frontier visited the Thet Kay Pyin camp in January, and
residents there said members of the Rakhine government and UEHRD had met with
camp leaders to discuss moving people from the camps. Residents said they had
told officials they wanted to return to where they lived before the violence in
2012.
In the five years since the violence, only about 20,000
people have been able to return to areas near where they previously lived;
around 120,000 still live in IDP camps.
Speaking at a press conference held in Yangon on February
26 to discuss the Rakhine conflict, U Aung Tun Thet, a member of both the
implementation committee and UEHRD, told Frontier that negotiations had taken
place and that “the resettlement will take place near to where they lived
before”.
Aung Tun Thet said that the implementation committee
could not answer questions that were not related to its mandate, which only
included aid, resettlement and development.
It was unclear if the residents would be moved to camps,
or would be given freedom of movement, a recommendation that was put forward by
the advisory commission.
A spokesperson from the UN refugee agency told Frontier
that the Rakhine State government and humanitarian agencies had addressed
repair, maintenance and reconstruction needs for Sittwe’s IDP shelters in the
12 months to January. A further 20 percent of temporary shelters are in need of
urgent repair before the onset of the rainy season later this year.
U Ali Razu, 63, originally from Nazi Ward near downtown
Sittwe, told Frontier in January that “we are waiting for a decision to be made
by our leaders and government”.
Another Thet Kay Pyin resident, Daw Aye Aye Than – a
member of the Kaman community, one of 135 recognised ethnic groups in Myanmar –
said that she wanted to return to her home. “But we’re reluctant to live
together again in this kind of situation,” she said, in an apparent reference
to safety concerns if Muslim and Rakhine communities were to live side by side
again.
The implementation committee’s report said that in
February 2017, the government introduced Mayu FM, a radio channel that
broadcasts in the Burmese, Rakhine and Rohingya languages, and is currently
only available in Maungdaw Township. When the channel was introduced, there was
some opposition from the Rakhine community about the decision to broadcast in
the Rohingya language.
It also recommended redeveloping the old airports at
Munaung, an island in the south of the state, and at Mrauk-U, the ancient
capital in central Rakhine. Both airports have lain abandoned for almost a
decade.
Mrauk-U in particular, with its hundreds of temples that
were built between the 15th and 18th centuries, offers significant potential
for tourism development. It was the capital of the once-mighty Rakhine Empire
until it was annexed by the Burmese Konbaung Dynasty in 1785. In its final
report, the Rakhine advisory commission, recommended that the government
collaborate with UNESCO to ensure that Mrauk-U becomes eligible for world
heritage listing.
However, those plans suffered a setback in January when
at least eight protesters were shot dead by police in Mrauk-U. They were
protesting after the government had earlier cancelled an event planned to
commemorate the 233rd anniversary of the fall of the Rakhine Empire.
Tensions appear to be bubbling under the surface. Two
weeks later, U Bo Bo Min Theik, who had been the administrator of Mrauk-U at
the time of the incident, was found stabbed to death at the side of a road in
Rakhine, and on February 26, three bombs exploded in Sittwe, injuring a police
officer.
In its report, the implementation committee said that 61
Muslims had been able to sit examinations at the University of Distance
Education, and that intensive courses had been offered for 48 Muslims at the
Government Technical Institute in Thandwe between October 27 and November 29,
2017. Nine Muslim students were also admitted at the UDE (Sittwe) and 39 at the
same UDE in Toungup, the report said.
Because of concerns about anti-Muslim attitudes in
Toungup, which was the scene of large-scale violence in 2012, the government
said it has conducted these activities quietly.
A major, often under-reported issue in the Rakhine crisis
is drugs. The Annan report said “enormous quantities of drugs (mainly
methamphetamine, or ‘yaba’)” have been confiscated by Myanmar officials near
the border with Bangladesh, and there are regular reports of drug busts being
conducted in the state.
In October, a local official said they had seized
methamphetamine pills valued at more than K7 billion (US$5 million) in Rakhine
State during the month.
The committee said that it had taken action against two
senior officers and 16 lower-ranking police officials who were being
investigated for corruption charges related to drugs. Between January and
November last year, there were 138 drug-related arrests, in which 191 people
were brought to court.
The August attacks also brought border trade between
Myanmar and Bangladesh to a halt. According to the report, trade resumed in
October.
There are still significant issues to overcome in Rakhine
State, however, including the distribution of aid.