The Arakan Front Party (Burmese: ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ; abbreviated AFP) is a political party in Myanmar seeking Arakanese self-determination and holding hardline ultranationalist, anti-Rohingya and anti-Islam stances.[6][7][8][9] It was founded on 11 October 2018 by Dr. Aye Maung, former chairman of the Arakan National Party, and his colleagues, including his son Tin Maung Win.[10][11]

Arakan Front Party
ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ
AbbreviationAFP
LeaderAye Maung
ChairpersonAye Maung[1][2][3][4]
Vice ChairpersonKyaw Zaw Oo[3]
SpokespersonKyaw Zaw Oo
SecretariesSoe Win
Tin Maung Win
Tun Thein
FoundersAye Maung
Kyaw Zaw Oo
Tin Maung Win
Founded11 October 2018 (2018-10-11)
HeadquartersSittwe, Rakhine State [5]
IdeologyArakanese self-determination[6]
Anti-Rohingya[6][7]
Anti-Islam[7]
Ultranationalism[6][7]
Political positionRight-wing to Far-right
Slogan"ရဲရင့်အသံရှင် ၊ မုန်တိုင်းပင်ဖြတ်သန်း ၊ အောင်ပွဲလှမ်းချီ ၊ ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ"
Seats in the House of Nationalities
0 / 224
Seats in the House of Representatives
1 / 440
Seats in the Rakhine State Hluttaw
2 / 47
Party flag
Website
Arakan Front blog

History

edit

The AFP announced on 29 March 2020 that the party had elected a new leadership consisting of Aye Maung as chairperson, Kyaw Zaw Oo as Vice Chairperson, and Soe Win, Tin Maung Win, Tun Thein and Than Naing as secretaries.[2] However, some members could not take their new leadership roles because their former party, the Arakan National Party, refused to let them resign and join the AFP.[12] Aye Maung and Kyaw Zaw Oo are both known to be hardline nationalists.[5][13][14]

In the 2020 general election, the AFP fielded its candidates in 42 constituencies. After the Union Election Commission cancelled the election in most of Rakhine State, the AFP's number of candidates was consequently reduced to three contesting in the House of Nationalities, five in the House of Representatives and ten in the Rakhine State Hluttaw. Out of these 18 contested seats, the AFP won one seat in the House of Representatives and two seats in the Rakhine State Hluttaw.[15][16][17]

The AFP declined an offer by the Tatmadaw, which overthrew the elected government of Myanmar in a military coup on 1 February 2021, to accept a cabinet minister position in the State Administration Council.[18]

In late 2022, Arakan Army, the Arakanese ethnic armed group battling the junta detained two high leaders of AFP, Kyaw Zaw Oo and Kyaw Lwin.[19] They are currently still in detainment and the Arakan Army stated that they are interned in one of their military regions in Rakhine state and refused to disclose the reason of their detainment.[20]

In 2023, Aye Maung stated that AFP would take part in the regime’s planned potential elections and went to register in junta’s electoral commission.[21][22] Later on, Aye Maung also met two members of the Japanese parliament and lobbied for the junta in Japan.[23] The leader of the junta, Min Aung Hlaing awarded Aye Maung the Wunna Kyawhtin title, a high order of merit award in January 2023.[24]

References

edit
  1. ^ "ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ[ARAKAN FRONT PARTY(AFP)]". ပြည်ထောင်စုရွေးကောက်ပွဲကော်မရှင်. Union Election Commission (Myanmar). Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Stateement No.(2/2020) issued by the Arakan Front Party (29 March 2020) ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေငြာချက် အမှတ် (၂/၂၀၂၀)". Way Back Machine. the Arakan Front Party. 29 March 2020. Archived from the original on 27 December 2020. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  3. ^ a b "AA ကို အကြမ်းဖက်အုပ်စုအဖြစ် ကြေငြာခြင်း ပြန်သုံးသပ်ပေးရန် ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ တောင်းဆို". the Voice Myanmar. 3 March 2020. Archived from the original on 21 February 2021. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
  4. ^ Dr Aye Maung (Author), Daw Mya Mya Thet (messenger). Message from Dr Aye Maung via his wife on 26th October 2020 (mp4) (.mp4 video) (in Arakanese). Arakan: Arakan Front Party. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  5. ^ a b van den Assum, Laetitia; Chutikul, Kobsak (6 March 2021). "Myanmar's coup stalls settlement of Rohingya saga". Bangkok Post. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d Naing, Kaung Hset (7 September 2020). "We are ready to govern our state". Frontier Myanmar. Archived from the original on 29 December 2020. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
  7. ^ a b c d Hlaing, Kyaw Hsan (10 August 2022). "Myanmar's Rakhine State: Parties Split, Rebels Rise, and the Junta Schemes". ပြည်ထောင်စုရွေးကောက်ပွဲကော်မရှင်. Union Election Commission (Myanmar). Retrieved 10 February 2024.
  8. ^ "AFP launches grass roots activities in Sittwe". Burma News International. 24 June 2019. Retrieved 19 November 2020.
  9. ^ Khine, Min Aung (14 November 2018). "Arakan Front Party Rallies for 2020". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 19 November 2020.
  10. ^ Aung, Soe Thu (2 November 2018). "ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ (AFP) ကို ၇ ရက်အတွင်းကန့်ကွက်နိုင်ကြောင်း ရွေးကောက်ပွဲကော်မရှင် ကြေညာ". Mizzima (in Burmese). Retrieved 19 November 2020.
  11. ^ Kan, Maung (12 October 2018). "ဒေါက်တာအေးမောင် ဦးဆောင်သော ပါတီ ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီအမည်ဖြင့် တည်ထောင်ခွင့်ရ". 7Day News (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 31 October 2020. Retrieved 19 November 2020.
  12. ^ "'Like dictators': ANP leaders block election hopefuls from resigning". Frontier Myanmar. 28 July 2020. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  13. ^ "Myanmar locks down Rakhine capital after outbreak of more infectious virus strain". Reuters. 21 August 2021. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  14. ^ "Myanmar court jails Rakhine leader for 20 years on treason charge". Al Jazeera. 19 March 2019. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  15. ^ "ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ၏မူဝါဒနှင့် ရွေးကောက်ပွဲကတိကဝတ်များ – ပြည်သူများအတွက် ရွေးကောက်ပွဲကတိကဝတ် မပေးလိုဟု ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီပြော". နိုင်ငံတကာမြန်မာ့သတင်း (in Burmese). 16 September 2020. Retrieved 19 November 2020.
  16. ^ "ရွေးကောက်ပွဲအနိုင်ရ ကိုယ်စားလှယ်စာရင်း ထုတ်ပြန်ပြီးစီး". RFA Burmese (in Burmese). 9 November 2018. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  17. ^ "AFP wins three parliamentary seats in Kyaukphyu". Eleven Media Group. 13 November 2018. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
  18. ^ "Statement issued by the Arakan Front Party (06-02-2021) လက်ရှိအရေးပေါ်ကာလ အပြောင်းအလဲများနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ၏ ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေငြာချက်". Way Back Machine. the Arakan Front Party. 6 February 2021. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  19. ^ "ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီခေါင်းဆောင်ဟောင်း AA ဖမ်းဆီး". Voice of America (in Burmese). 30 November 2022. Retrieved 10 February 2024.
  20. ^ "ဖမ်းဆီးထားတဲ့ ပါတီခေါင်းဆောင်နှစ်ဦးကို ပြန်လွှတ်ဖို့ AFP တောင်းဆို". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). 11 September 2023. Retrieved 10 February 2024.
  21. ^ "ဒေါက်တာအေးမောင် ဦးဆောင်သည့် ရခိုင့်ဦးဆောင်ပါတီ မှတ်ပုံပြန်တင်". Democratic Voice of Burma (in Burmese). 1 March 2023. Retrieved 10 February 2024.
  22. ^ Hlaing, Kyaw Hsan (1 March 2023). "How Would Rakhine Figure in Myanmar's "Sham" Elections?". Fulcrum. Retrieved 10 February 2024.
  23. ^ "Pro-army Myanmar delegates visit Japan to lobby for junta-planned election". Myanmar Now. 3 January 2023. Retrieved 28 September 2023.
  24. ^ "ဦးဝီရသူအပါအဝင် ဂုဏ်ထူးဆောင်ဘွဲ့ ရသူများကို အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင် ဆုချီးမြှင့်". Democratic Voice of Burma (in Burmese). 3 January 2023. Retrieved 10 February 2024.
edit