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Yangon: Eight villagers have gone missing since skirmishes erupted between Myanmar’s military and Arakan Army insurgents in Rakhine state’s Mrauk-U township earlier this month. The Rakhine Ethnic Congress (REC), a local development organization, said on Tuesday that relatives believe the military is behind the disappearances. “One woman told us she saw Burmese soldiers from Brigade 22 arresting her husband,” REC secretary Zaw Zaw Tun told dpa. “She asked a military officer to release him, but the officer refused.” Clashes between the military and the Arakan Army have displaced an estimated 7,000 civilians in Rakhine and Chin states, Myanmar’s two poorest regions, since January. The Arakan Army, which demands autonomy for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, claims to have killed dozens of police and military officers in surprise attacks on security outposts along Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh, the same area from which the military displaced more than 720,000 Rohingya Muslims in 2017. (dpa)
