A group of Myanmar nationals staged a demonstration in front of the Singapore embassy in Washington on Monday. THE STRAITS TIMES/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
A group of Myanmar nationals staged a demonstration in front of the Singapore embassy in Washington on Monday in protest against the Singapore government’s arrest and deportation of leaders of the Arakan Association (Singapore).
Six Myanmar nationals were arrested in Singapore last week and deported for illegally garnering support for armed violence against the Myanmar government, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement on July 10.
The arrested Myanmar nationals were allegedly supporters of the Arakan Army (AA), a Rakhine insurgent group which the Myanmar government has designated a terrorist organisation. The AA is the armed wing of the United League of Arakan, which seeks greater autonomy for the Rakhine state and whose members are mostly Buddhist ethnic Rakhines.
According to a statement from the Arakan Youths Union (Japan), a group of Myanmar nationals have planned a protest outside the Singapore embassy in Tokyo on Wednesday afternoon.
The Japan chapter of the Arakan Youths Union said the arrested individuals were not connected with the AA but instead were aiding Arakanese refugees in Myanmar. It added that the AA was not a terrorist organisation but a legitimate rebel army.
Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said it was aware of the protest, and that a group from the Arakan American Community had delivered a letter to the embassy regarding the arrest of some Myanmar nationals in Singapore.
“MFA will convey the letter to relevant authorities,” said an MFA spokesman in an e-mail.
Monday’s protest at the Singapore embassy in Washington was attended by at least two dozen protesters, according to photos posted on the Voice of Arakan Twitter account.
They held handwritten placards which urged Singapore to “stop selling Arakanese to the Myanmar army” and signs with the names of the six Myanmar nationals who had been arrested.
A Burma News International article on the protest cited organisers as “denouncing the Singaporean government for transferring the leaders of the Arakan Association to the Myanmar police force despite knowing the Myanmar Army is committing war crimes in ethnic regions”.
Meanwhile, the US announced on Tuesday that Myanmar’s army chief and four other generals would be banned from entering the US due to their roles in human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings in the Rakhine state, during the military-led ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in August 2017. THE STRAITS TIMES (SINGAPORE)
