Chilling silence surrounds Rohingya

For much of last week, the silence was disconcerting. After a series of coordinated attacks on border posts in western Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state left nine soldiers and police dead on Oct 9, a crackdown followed and the hunt for some 400 suspects turned bloody. The violence in the two weeks which followed left a further five officers dead, which is unforgivable, but the crackdown from authorities against the unrecognised Rohingya Muslim minority was more brutal: officially 33 accused insurgents were killed, including several suspects in custody, but given the secrecy there are fears the toll is much higher. (Courtesy of bangkokpost.com)

In Myanmar, Military Action Forces Some to Flee: ‘We Just Had to Run Away to Save Our Lives’

The owner of a small grocery store in western Myanmar, Ko Thu Ya fled his home nearly three weeks ago with his family and has been on the run ever since.

Mr. Thu Ya, 25, is from Maungdaw Township, a coastal town on the Bangladesh border, where military action has left scores of people dead and forced thousands of people from their homes, rights groups have said. Most of the victims, like Mr. Thu Ya, are members of the Rohingya ethnic group.

The Myanmar government has described the action by the army and the border police as a counterinsurgency response to an attack this month on a nearby border post that killed nine police officers.

Rights groups in the region say they have received reports that soldiers and police officers have shot unarmed people, raped women, looted shops and burned homes. Local officials deny those reports. (Courtesy of nytimes.com)