New Delhi: The staff of the Indian consulate in Sittwe in Myanmar’s Rakhine province has been relocated to Yangon due to the “security situation’, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday (April 12).
In February, India advised its citizens to leave the Rakhine province immediately. Two months later, the Indian consulate in Sittwe was relocated.
“We have relocated our staff to Yangon because the situation in Sittwe is precarious. As far as Mandalay is concerned, our Consulate is fully functional,” said MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal at the weekly briefing on Friday.
“We are closely monitoring the security situation in Myanmar, particularly in the Rakhine State. Necessary steps have been taken to ensure the safety of our citizens,” said Jaiswal.
Since the 2021 coup, the military junta has been facing challenges from pro-democracy rebel forces, who have also been joined by ethnic armies.
India, along with Myanmar’s other neighbours, have remained engaged with the Junta, which has largely been diplomatically isolated by the West.
Since October last year, the Myanmar ruling military has suffered a series of reverses on the battlefield, with the various ethnic armies capturing large swathes in Rakhine and Shan province. Earlier this week, the military lost a key trading town on Myawaddy on the border with Thailand.
Faced with a high desertion rate, Myanmar also announced mandatory military service of two years for all young men and women in February. The first batch of the newly conscripted began basic training on Tuesday, state-run media reported.
