Myanmar army told to stage push against Arakan rebels

NAYPYIDAW: Myanmar’s military announced that the Arakan Army, a Buddhist rebel group in Rakhine state, has been classified a terrorist organisation after mounting a flurry of recent attacks.

The state earlier was the site of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign by the military against the Muslim Rohingya minority, causing more than 700,000 to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Military officers said at a news conference in the capital Naypyidaw that leader Aung San Suu Kyi ordered security forces to launch the offensive against the Arakan Army.

The insurgent group, which seeks autonomy from the central government, killed 13 police officers and wounded nine in attacks on Jan 4.

The moves to counter the rebels were decided at a Jan 7 meeting at Myanmar’s presidential offices, the officers said.

Suu Kyi “said the Arakan Army is just a terrorist group and instructed us to defeat them effectively, quickly and clearly”, Maj-Gen Nyi Nyi Tun, vice-chairman of the Myanmar Military Information Committee, told reporters. A terrorist designation criminalises a group and bans all communication with them.

He said Suu Kyi suggested that if she did not order the military to attack the Arakan Army, the international community would accuse her of religious prejudice for attacking the Muslim guerrillas of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army but not Buddhist rebels who committed similar actions with similar goals. — AP