About 1,000 Burma Army troops arrived by boat in northern Maungdaw early in the morning of September 11, 2020, according to a Rohingya boat driver forced to transport the troops overnight from Inn Din.
The boat driver, from Maung Ni village near Maungdaw town, said the Maungdaw administration officer, Tactical Command office officer and Maung Ni Village administration officer had ordered 20 fishing boats from Maung Ni to travel down to Inn Din, on the sea coast of southern Maungdaw, and stand by from September 8.
On September 10, four Burma Navy ships arrived off the coast of Inn Din, and the boat driver saw “thousands” of troops disembarking. That night, the boat drivers from Maung Ni were forced to transport the troops along the coast up to northern Maungdaw, carrying about 50 armed soldiers in each boat.
The fishing boats sent the Burma Army troops to different locations along the Naf River, as far as Ngakhura, about 20 kilometers north of Maungdaw town. Troops also landed at the Maungdaw No.1 Jetty near Maungdaw town, and Kanyin Chaung, where the Burmese government is building an economic zone just north of the town.
The fishing boats took over five hours to travel from Inn Din, arriving at their destinations in the early hours of the morning.
The arrival of so many Burma Army troops is striking fear among Rohingya residents of Maungdaw, who fear a repeat of the deadly “clearance operations” in 2017, which drove over 720,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.
