New Rakhine chief gets backing

A leading Rakhine nationalist has thrown his support behind the newly appointed chief minister of the state, Maj-General Maung Maung Ohn.

Dr Aye Maung, an MP with the Rakhine National Party, told Parliament’s upper house yesterday that “despite some objections” to the new chief minister the party would cooperate with him “because he understands border affairs”.

Aye Maung had been chairman of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party before it officially merged with the Arakan League for Democracy to form the Rakhine National Party in January of this year. 

Maung Maung Ohn was nominated by President Thein Sein as the next chief minister of the strife-torn state during an emergency meeting of its parliament on June 25, a week after Nay Pyi Taw announced that Hla Maung Tin had been “allowed to resign from the post. 

Rakhine, which shares a border with Bangladesh at its northwestern tip, experienced two major outbreaks of communal violence in 2012 that resulted in more than 200 deaths. The conflict between the state’s ethnic Rakhine majority and a Muslim minority described as migrants from Bangladesh in Myanmar and as a distinct ethnic group, Rohingya, internationally sparked global alarm. 

In his remarks to Parliament, Dr Aye Maung said that discussions between the two groups could begin if “the Bengalis stop claiming to be Rohingya”. 

According to the United Nations more than 140,000 people, primarily Rohingya, remain in camps for internally displaced persons in the state and an estimated 80,000 have fled by boat since the conflict erupted.

Dr Aye Maung told the upper house that discussions with Maung Maung Ohn had ranged from how to enforce the 1982 Citizenship Law, which does not recognise “Rohingyas” as an ethnic group entitled to citizenship, to socioeconomic growth. 

Aye Maung suggested that peace hinged on what name is used to describe the Muslim group, which comprises about one-third of the state’s about 3 million people. 

“Bengalis are Bengalis,” he told Parliament. “Their false claims that they are ethnic Rohingya as well as their political aims should be stopped,” he said.

Aye Maung also said that attacks on the offices and warehouses of international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the state were the result of dissatisfaction with their work. Ethnic Rakhine people believed the NGOs were “biased towards the Bengalis”.