A decade displaced, Kyauktalone IDPs to be relocated this year: junta authorities

By DMG 11 May 2022

DMG Newsroom
11 May 2022, Kyaukphyu 

Authorities have said new houses will be built this year for the relocation of internally displaced people (IDPs) from Kyauktalone displacement camp in Arakan State’s Kyaukphyu Township. 

More than 300 houses will be built for the IDPs, with over 100 houses having been built so far, according to Kyaukphyu Township administrator U Myo Min Tun. 

More than 1,000 people from 363 households in Kyaukphyu town’s Ayarshi, Paik The, Taman Chaung and Pyin Phyu Maw wards were displaced to the Kyauktalone IDP camp in the aftermath of the intercommunal violence that wracked Arakan State in 2012. 

“We plan to complete the houses this year, and [IDPs] will also be relocated this year. The new site consists of lakes and a clinic,” said U Myo Min Tun. 

Plans to close displacement camps for Muslim IDPs, including the Kyauktalone site, is part of a national strategy on resettlement of IDPs introduced under the National League for Democracy (NLD) government in 2018. 

Each household will be given a house — reportedly made of wood floor and bamboo walls with corrugated iron roofs, and worth 2.5 million kyats — on land plots measuring 40x30 feet at the new location, according to Arakan State military council spokesman U Hla Thein. 

“We are building a village for them for their convenience,” he said. 

The Arakan State military council is also building a temporary school, a clinic, and an administration office, as well as piping in water and installing power cables, he added. 

The relocation plan is apparently moving forward despite the 2021 overthrow of the NLD government under which it was devised. 

However, Muslims sheltering at the Kyauktalone camp have rejected government arrangements to resettle at the new site some two furlongs away from the camp, insisting that they want to be resettled at their original places of residence. 

IDPs have complained that the new site is isolated and far from the town, as well as being prone to flooding during the rainy season and water shortages in the hot season. 

Ko Kyaw Zin Lin from Kyauktalone IDP camp said: “That place is far from the town. We will have difficulties with our livelihoods. The land is low-lying and I am afraid there will be flooding in the rainy season.”