Maungdaw, Arakan State: Informers from various departments of Maungdaw are making life very difficult for the local people, according to an elderly person from Maungdaw Town.
 
The informers are providing wrong information to their concerned departments, to earn various favours as well as money. Therefore it becomes very difficult for the poor local people to survive along with their families, he said.
 
Dil Mohammed, son of Kalu and Rashid, son of Bawdu from Shewza Village are informers working for the Nasaka’s outpost number 14. They have close connections with Captain Khin Maung Myint ( now Captain Aung Htoo). They have been providing wrong information to the Nasaka, like possession of Bangladeshi mobiles, border crossing, trafficking and money laundering. Due to these wrong allegations, many people are facing arrest and have had to pay bribes to avoid being arrested, a school teacher from the village said.

Besides, these informers are also involved in drug trafficking, due to an understanding with the concerned officer in their village and township and also with the help of Way Tha Maung, the brother-in-law of U Shew, who is the Secretary of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) of Maungdaw. He was released from jail last year, he added.

The two informers are working with the help of USDA. They are also involved in smuggling activities from Shewza village, where they have paid money to the officer in charge of Nasaka outpost 14. If someone tries to take action about this, they use the power of the USDA and take the help of other influential people from the administration to dissolve the matter and counter attack them, he added.

A village officer, who tried to support the villagers regarding this matter, had to face many false cases filed against him, by the concerned authorities, a victim of these allegations said.

Due to the wrong information provided by the informers, some Rohingya people lost their houses and lands, as three houses were seized by the authorities last month.

The Rohingya people, who lost their houses, were Goolitta, Zakhair and Dil Mohamed. They hailed from Shawza village of Maungdaw, currently,  facing a lot of trouble to survive during the monsoon season, he added.

On the other hand, the informers of the police are causing trouble for the shopkeepers in Maungdaw, accusing them of selling drugs in their shops and asking them for money to avoid arrest, a shopkeeper from Maungdaw said.

This is a master plan of the police and the informers jointly, to keep Yaba tablets in their shops through informers after which the police would raid the shops. Then the police would demand money for the release of the shopkeepers, said the shopkeeper.

“If there were no informers, maybe we could stay peacefully in our town and no one would get into trouble with the authorities,” a student from Maungdaw said.