January 1, 2018
Blockade of Rohingya villages in Akyab is leading to severe food shortages throughout the township. The blockade, tightened since September sees no sign of abating, and many allege it is getting impossible to go out of their villages to earn a livelihood.
A source from Boga Dweep alleges, “the government has prohibited us from earning through fishing and cultivation.” This is done by preventing locals access to the waterways and the agricultural fields. Anyone venturing into the fields or the river banks risk being killed.
According to multiple sources, the government has also blocked access to the forests and hills where many Rohingyas earn a livelihood through logging and collecting wood. Logging, fishing and farming are the mainstay occupations for the vast majority of the Rohingya population. Without access to their livelihood sources, the Rohingyas do not have the means to purchase food.
Rohingya activists have long alleged that the denial of livelihood by the security forces is a calculated ploy by the regime to starve the Rohingyas out, a process described as ‘slow burning genocide’.
The Akyab island which also includes the state capital once had a vibrant Muslim population, but they were largely driven out or kept under confinement in IDP camps since 2012. Those living in the villages have always had to contend with food shortages, but the situation has been deteriorating since last month.
Akyab and the other southern townships have not suffered from the violence inflicted by Tatmadaw led forces that have killed thousands of Rohingyas in the frontier areas. However the government has used the excuse of security threat to impose further restrictions on these townships, where the Rohingyas have become a vulnerable minority surrounded by a hostile and well armed Rakhine population backed by the Hlun Htein.
Incidentally, violence broke out in late August as local villagers incited by the ARSA attacked police outposts to break out of a strict blockade imposed in the Rathedaung township. The retaliatory and hugely disproportionate violence against unarmed villagers killed thousands, in what many including high ranking UN officials and world leaders are calling a genocide. There are allegations that the government is trying to provoke a similar attack in Akyab through the imposition of a stringent blockade that will lead to starvation in the Muslim settlements. However reliable source, say this remains unlikely as the Rohingya population surrounded, unarmed and cut off, are in no position to commit violence and are more likely to starve to death.
