The junta’s brutal crackdown on anti-coup protesters has forced thousands of young people to join the newly formed “People’s Defense Forces” in the jungle, and has led to renewed fighting with existing ethnic armed groups.
A ceasefire in Rakhine that had largely held since the coup was broken after the Arakan army attacked the army there in November 2023.
The group continued with recording the tourist beach town of Thandwe in June 2024, a major setback for the junta (archived link).
The photo of the sinking ship surfaced on Facebook accounts of the pro-Arakan army here, here And here as the group reportedly launched an offensive to control the last remaining naval base near the city (archived link).
However, there are no credible reports of a Burmese naval vessel sinking in Rakhine State in August 2024.
A Royal Malaysian Navy spokesperson confirmed that the photo does indeed show the KD Pendekar, a naval vessel that sank off the coast of Johor on August 25, 2024.
KD Pendekar sinks
Reverse image and keyword searches on Google yielded a after on X, formerly Twitter, by an account from Malaysia on August 25, 2024 about the sinking of a naval vessel from the Southeast Asian country on the same day (archived link).
The message also showed a photo of the sunken ship and a video of the rescue operations. In the video, people can be heard shouting ‘pull’ in Malay.
The caption reads: “KD Pendekar, stranded. Awaiting detailed report of incident/accident investigation.”
Below you can see a screenshot of the photo of the fake post (left) and the photo of the X-post (right):
The same X-post was embedded in a report about the sinking by the Malaysian English-language newspaper The Star (archived link).
The Royal Malaysian Navy (TLDM) has confirmed that the photo circulated in false reports actually shows KD Pendekar.
“TLDM confirms that the photo in the Facebook post is of KD Pendekar during the incident on August 25, 2024,” a spokeswoman told AFP on August 30, 2024.
The vessel suffered a “leak and significant flooding” after it reportedly struck a submerged object two nautical miles southeast of Tanjung Penyusop, in the southern state of Johor in Peninsular Malaysia, a TLDM said proposition on August 25 (archived link).
“The entire crew was rescued after attempts to control the leak and stabilize the vessel failed,” the statement said. “The TLDM’s main focus is now on conducting salvage operations to save the vessel.”
However, a Navy diver died during the salvage operation on August 28, Malaysian online news site Free Malaysia Today reported reported (archived link).
The TLDM shared a photo of the ship, which resembles the photo circulating online.
AFP has previously debunked misinformation about the conflict in Myanmar here.
