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October 23, 2016
A boy was arrested and tortured by police in Zar Di Taung, Rathedaung when selling chickens in the local market.
Two 13 year boys went to the market on Saturday when a local village headman started to interrogate them. When the boys replied, they were from Soya parang, a nearby village, the village headman started asking them complicated questions. When the boys did not come up with answers deemed satisfactory, the village headman told them they must be outsiders who had come in the area to attack security forces.
At this point, one of the boys ran away, but the other was apprehended by Rakhines present on the spot. He was taken to the local police camp and brutally tortured, say local sources.
A day earlier, a local MP Daw khin Su Wey ordered all locals not to sell food to Rohingyas, in what locals see as a renewed move to starve the Rohingyas out of the township. The order would mean there is likely to be more intense food shortages in the area.
Rathedaung Rohingyas suffer from chronic food shortages as they are prevented from leaving their villages and going to the waterways to fish, or the woods for logging. Fishing and logging are the last remaining occupations for the impoverished people in the area after they were uprooted from their farms in 2012. Earlier this month, village authorities specifically ordered Rohingyas not to go out of their villages, but locals say for last four years, they have faced continuous attacks by organised Rakhine mobs whenever they have tried to earn a living.
Muslim activists have long warned Rakhine nationalists and government forces have employed a well devised strategy to starve out Rohingyas by preventing them access to livelihood and ultimately force them to leave the country. Locals in Rathedaung say the strategy is working well without attracting international attention.
For more information on food shortages in Rathedaung please see
http://www.myanmarobserver.com/index.php/news/rohingya-news/297-starvation-spectre-haunts-rathedaung-as-rohingyas-asked-not-to-leave-villages#.V_VOyEBEQKs.facebook
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