Junta troop deployments in villages and tightened security checks are severely affecting the livelihoods of local residents in Arakan State.

Many residents in Zin Chaung village, Kyaukphyu Township, have dared not leave their homes after Myanmar military soldiers deployed in the village, according to former Arakan State parliament lawmaker U Kyaw Lwin from Kyaukphyu.

“As Myanmar military soldiers carry out patrols at night, people dare not go out after 8 p.m. Deprived families dare not go out in the daytime to collect vegetables or catch fish. If it continues this way, poor people may go hungry,” he said.

Apart from farming and fishing, many rural people in Arakan State rely on forests for their livelihood, collecting firewood, bamboo and other forest products to sell.

But junta security checks are discouraging locals from going to work, said a farmer from Mrauk-U Township who wished to remain anonymous.

“If we encounter them [junta soldiers] on our way to our farms, they will question us. Though we have done nothing wrong, we don’t feel safe,” said the farmer.

Myanmar’s military regime mans checkpoints in at least five places in Mrauk-U, according to local residents.

In Kyauktaw Township, some residents have fled their homes to safer locations due to junta security checks in villages, said one community elder.

“People flee because those being arrested by them [junta soldiers] are not criminals, but civilians,” he said, referring to dozens of civilian arrests made by the military regime in Arakan State over recent weeks.

Taung Pauk village in Kyauktaw Township was deserted after more than 100 junta troops entered the village on Tuesday.

Commodity flows have also been slowed due to tightened junta security checks along Arakan State roads.

A Rathedaung Township resident said: “It is a form of threat to local residents. Though they do nothing wrong, they don’t feel secure and dare not travel freely.”

The military’s imposition of more stringent security checks has applied to both roadways and waterways, say locals.

DMG has not been able to contact Arakan State Security and Border Affairs Minister Colonel Kyaw Thura about the junta’s increasingly burdensome presence in Arakan State.

Military tensions have been running high between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army for months, with intermittent clashes in recent weeks threatening a precarious informal ceasefire between the two sides that has been in place since November 2020.