🇲🇲 MNDAA Boss under house arrest in China

Hello friends!

I had a brief break but I’m very taken by this story from Shan State/China. Consider me still on a break, but I had to do a quick one. 

Erin 

MNDAA boss Peng Daxun detained in China

Peng Daxun, the 59-year-old commander of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, has been held by Chinese authorities after he popped across the border to Yunnan Province last month, Myanmar Now reported Monday. 

In Myanmar’s mosaic of groups, MNDAA is ‘an ethnic Kokang armed group, … a key member of an alliance of anti-regime forces that has captured a wide swathe of territory across northern Shan State since launching a major offensive in October of last year.’ Thank you, Myanmar Now. The group has been especially prominent since the October movement with Shan State a crucial battleground, and of extra world news interest because of the border there with China. I shared this BBC piece on the border back in September, but definitely worth revisiting in light of this news. 

China has been involved in ceasefire talks between the MNDAA and the military junta all year. A January ceasefire announcement fizzled with renewed clashes and a July ceasefire — timed for the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee meet — was shortlived. 

Things have gotten very bumpy in Shan since. A story from the Irrawaddy on Oct. 26 outlines the stakes. The junta had increased air strikes on Lashio, the state’s largest town and crucial to the Shan State battle, while China had reportedly stepped up pressure on the MNDAA to back off. Peng Daxun is reported in this piece to have arrived in Yunnan to chat with Chinese authorities that week. ‘Observers speculate that Beijing may be applying more pressure on the MNDAA to stop fighting and engage in talks with the regime,’ the Irrawaddy reported. 

I’m not sure if he was missing, exactly, but news of his detention in China has shocked. Radio Free Asia reports that he’s under house arrest in the province — but also that he was in China for ‘medical treatment.’ That line appears to come directly from Beijing and RFA’s source is an unidentified Myanmar military contact, so make of that what you will.  

The warlord is not for turning. MNDAA sources told Myanmar Now that Peng has promised to “sacrifice his life” to prevent pressure on the group to withdraw from Lashio. For the people of Shan State and neighbouring Kachin, such pronouncements are irrelevant. At least 12 people, including eight children, have been killed this week by junta airstrikes.

Rohingya in the region

Al Jazeera reported six people had died on board a boat that arrived in Aceh, in Indonesia’s north, at the end of October. Indonesia has become a very hostile place for fleeing Rohingya people, read here for more on that. Immigration officials in Thailand detained 70 people, including 30 children (!), in the country believed to be planning to head to Malaysia or Indonesia, Reuters reports.   

How Rohingya activists are using art, food and storytelling as a form of resistance — Clare M. Cooper, The Conversation 

Rohingya activists, advocates and health organisations in Australia have been frustrated by the lack of support provided to displaced Rohingya people.

This ethnic minority group called Myanmar home for centuries before being made stateless by the government in 1982, persecuted due to both their race and majority Muslim religion.

Rohingya recount horrors of being kidnapped, forced to fight in Myanmar — Abdur Rahman and Sharif Khiam, RFA

The 16-year-old Rohingya boy said he was kidnapped from southeastern Bangladesh and forced to fight in Myanmar’s civil war – a story shared by others who were able to return to Cox’s Bazar, where they face additional terror in the refugee camps.

The boy, who like other Rohingya in this report are not identified because of concerns for their safety, said he was one of about 80 Rohingya who were abducted from their camp and forced to cross the nearby border into Myanmar.