More than 1,000 activists from 17 townships in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state demanded the right to control the impoverished region’s natural resources — most notably oil and gas — during a protest in Kyaukphyu township on Tuesday, RFA reported.

The Arakan Natural Resources and Environmental Network (ANREN), an alliance of roughly 30 Rakhine civil society and environmental rights groups that has organized other protests and marches over control of the region’s natural resources, led protests on both Monday and Tuesday.

ANREN leader Kyaw Zeya Kyaw, who is a member of the organization’s People’s Resource Network, told RFA’s Myanmar Service that people staged the demonstration — now a biennial event since 2016 — calling for Rakhine state, and not the central government, to control its own resources.