Regime imposes travel restrictions on ethnic basis

By Admin 28 Aug 2024

DMG Newsroom
28 August 2024, Sittwe

Myanmar’s military regime has imposed tight checks on travellers holding citizenship ID cards indicating that they are from Arakan State and Shan State. Some have even been arrested.

Ethnically Arakanese people as well as Kokang, Wa and Palaung people cannot travel unless they have letters from relevant police stations and ward administration offices approving their travel.

One Arakanese man staying in Yangon said: “We can’t buy bus tickets unless we have letters of permission from administrators of the wards we currently live in and relevant police stations. People holding citizenship ID cards indicating that they are from Arakan State are questioned a lot at junta checkpoints. Junta soldiers [at the checkpoints] give us suspicious looks.”

Hundreds of thousands of residents from Sittwe, Kyaukphyu, Thandwe and Gwa townships who fled the fighting in Arakan State are taking shelter in Yangon, Ayeyarwady and Bago regions.

The regime has imposed travel restrictions on people whose citizenship ID cards show they are from Arakan State since March. After the fall of the military’s Northeastern Command based in Lashio, northern Shan State, the regime has imposed tight travel restrictions on people holding Shan State and Arakan State ID cards, and has also made arrests.

Though the regime has not officially banned the sale of bus tickets to people holding citizenship indicating that they are from Arakan State or Shan State, many bus operators do not sell tickets to them because of the junta’s tight restrictions, said a manager of an express bus operator in Yangon.

“There are tight checks and arrests on the roads. We don’t want our customers to be harmed. So, we have suspended selling bus tickets to them,” he said.

The regime also imposed travel restrictions on people holding Sagaing, Bago and Magwe ID cards in 2022.

Observers have called the latest restrictions just the latest move by the regime to oppress people from northern Shan State and Arakan State following its series of military defeats there.