Myanmar Keeps Media Away From Rakhine Conflict Zone

On August 25, 2017, following a series of deadly attacks on police stations and guard posts in the country’s western Rakhine state by an obscure militant group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), Myanmar security forces launched what they called “clearance operations” in the Rakhine townships of Buthedaung and Maungdaw.

The scorched-earth campaign—in which soldiers and local Rakhine groups burned Rohingya villages and terrorized residents, killing men and raping women—drove 700,000 members of the Muslim ethnic minority into neighboring Bangladesh.

Over the following months, international human rights groups as well as U.N. agencies gathered information from satellite imagery and interviews with refugees and attack survivors in Bangladesh—information that supported allegations of ethnic cleansing by Myanmar’s army.

Read the full story: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/media-restrictions-11052018155613.html

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