Regime forces have arrested at least 30 people in Rakhine State’s Mrauk-U Township after the Arakan Army (AA) detained three men suspected of being military intelligence officers on Tuesday evening.

Residents of Mrauk-U said that four military trucks began patrolling the town and making arrests early Wednesday morning. They have also taken up position at several key locations, including the Ah Lel Zay bridge and a local high school.

“I heard it has something to do with three military intelligence officers who were taken by the AA yesterday,” a resident who did not want to be named told Myanmar Now on Wednesday.

According to another local man who witnessed the arrest of a trishaw driver, a total of around 30 people are believed to have been taken into custody.

“The military checked the trishaw driver’s phone. I don’t know what they found, but they placed him under arrest. From what I’ve heard, at least 30 people, including three students, have been arrested,” the man said.

A woman living in the town’s Ah Lel Zay ward said that the middle school there allowed students to go home at noon due to concerns about the arrests.

“I heard that an eighth grader and a ninth grader were among those arrested. Apparently, they were picked up on their way to school and forced to sit in the scorching sun. I guess that’s why the middle school let its students go home early,” she said.

She added that the town’s Myoma market had also been closed and that even staff from the township general administration office and health department didn’t dare go out for fear of being arrested.

According to the woman, the regime forces are also targeting members of the AA’s political wing, the United League of Arakan (ULA).   

“There are ULA/AA members who are assigned to collect funds from each ward. The military got a list of their names and addresses, so all of them have fled,” she said.

Bus services between Mrauk-U and other major centres in northern Rakhine State, including Sittwe, Kyauktaw and Ponnagyun, have also been suspended, she added.

Arrests were also reported in Ponnagyun Township, near the state capital Sittwe, over the weekend, after a junta soldier was abducted there last Thursday, allegedly by the AA.

At a press conference held last week, the AA confirmed that it had arrested two regime soldiers in Kyauktaw Township on June 11 in retaliation for the detention of several of its members. 

The three Myanmar nationals—an arms dealer, an intermediary and a former volunteer in Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun’s office—are allegedly part of a larger army community

A coup regime-controlled court in Naypyitaw sentenced Bo Bo Nge, the ousted deputy governor of the Central Bank of Myanmar, to 20 years in prison on two charges of corruption on December 13, according to sources familiar with the proceedings. The details of the court verdicts were not known at the time of reporting. Bo Bo Nge was among the civilian state leaders and cabinet members arrested by the military as it staged a coup on February 1 last year in Naypyitaw. The junta indicted him on charges of corruption and moved him to Mandalay’s Obo Prison in May. Before being appointed as deputy governor of the Central Bank, Bo Bo Nge served on the  economic committee of Myanmar’s ousted ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).

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Bo Bo Nge, respected figure in Myanmar’s banking sector, faces up to 15 years in prison for actions the junta says are related to a lack of ‘strict supervision’ by the NLD government

Two labour rights activists and a driver who was arrested along with them were sentenced to three years in prison each on incitement charges on December 15, according to their colleagues. Khine Thinzar Aye, a communications officer for the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM), and Ei Phyu Myint, a member at the Industrial Workers’ Federation of Myanmar (IWFM), were arrested at a flash-mob protest in Yangon’s South Okkalapa Township on April 20 along with their driver, Nyan Sein.

At least 118 members of the CTUM, which has more than 60,000 members nationwide, remain in junta custody since last year’s coup for opposing the military takeover. Four other members of the CTUM were arrested at a similar protest on Panbingyi Street in Yangon’s Kyeemyindaing Township on September 13.

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Media

Freelance journalist Soe Yarzar Tun was sentenced to four years in prison on December 16 after a regime-controlled special court in Insein Prison found him guilty of violating Section 52a of the Counter-Terrorism Law. The charge was based on information found on his phone after his arrest, which was used to accuse him of communicating with anti-regime groups. He was indicted in April after being arrested the previous month in Bago Region’s Thone Sel Township, just days after escaping a raid on a monastery where he was practising as a monk. A source close to his family told Myanmar Now that several others held under the same charge were also convicted at the same time.

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On the same day, the Insein Prison court also sentenced two other journalists to five years in prison on a different charge. Htet Htet Aung, a news editor from the Yangon-based Thingangyun Post, and Wai Lin Yu, a reporter with the same publication, were both charged under Section 5 of the Explosive Substances Act following their arrest in September of last year. Both men denied owning the explosives found in the apartment where they were taken into custody.

International affairs

On December 13, the Kuala Lumpur High Court in Malaysia lifted a stay of deportation for 114 Myanmar nationals, in a move that could see them forcibly returned to their home country despite the risk to their safety. In a joint statement, Amnesty International Malaysia and Asylum Access Malaysia called on the government to “halt any decision to send people back to a violent and dangerous situation.” In February 2021, Malaysia immigration officials sent 1,086 people back to Myanmar despite a temporary stay announced by the high court in the wake of the coup on the first of that month.

Since April of this year, Malaysia has returned more than 2,000 Myanmar nationals, including many asylum seekers. On October 6, it sent 150 back under arrangements made together with the junta-aligned Myanmar embassy. Six were defectors from the Myanmar navy, at least one of whom was arrested upon his return. Myanmar nationals make up the majority of the roughly 185,000 asylum seekers and refugees currently registered by the UNHCR in Malaysia.

The incident comes a week after 68 Rohingya men and women were arrested in the same area while being transported in a truck