SITTWE—Three missing members of the Daingnet ethnic community of Thinbaw Hla Village in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw Township were found dead on Saturday according to the village administrator.
The three men were reported to have gone out crabbing on Friday, and their buried bodies were recovered the following day, said village administrator U Maung Sein Tun.
“They went to catch crabs and didn’t come back, so we searched for them the following day and found an earth pile in the bush near the village of Kun Thee Pin. We dug the earth pile and found their bodies,” he told The Irrawaddy.
Maungdaw Township administrator U Myint Khaing, who together with the township judge and a forensic doctor recovered the bodies, confirmed that the three victims had had their throats slit.
The three victims, aged 29, 30 and 40 respectively were cremated in Thinbaw Hla on Saturday evening.
These frequent killings of ethnic people in Maungdaw highlight the lack of rule of law and security here, said U Khin Maung Than, chairman of the Arakan National Party’s Maungdaw Township chapter.
“[Government] leaders don’t seem to be very interested in the problems facing ethnic people in Maungdaw. There is no rule of law and the culprits have never been arrested. I feel like [government leaders] don’t care at all about the safety of locals,” U Khin Maung Than told The Irrawaddy.
In October last year, a 14-year-old boy was killed while traveling from Kha Maung Seik Village to his home village of Aung Zan in northern Maungdaw Township.
