Bangladesh
Bangladesh saw a significant increase in violence around the January 2014 elections. The increase began prior to election day (January 5, 2014), with the announcement that certain parties would boycott the elections, and continued in the months and years that followed. On election day alone, there were 20 election related fatalities reported. Twenty more election related fatalities occurred through-out the rest of January, followed by 71 fatalities related to political party violence throughout the rest of 2014. (New York Times, 2014; BBC, 2014)
ACLED data shows that the majority of the violence was spontaneous, as shown by the high incidence of riots. However, the violence was also targeted. The targeted events included attacks on polling stations, political party members and leaders. (The Financial Express- Bangladesh, 2014; The Daily Star, 2014) In addition to the human and economic costs, the violence also affected the electoral process: voter turnout was extremely low compared to pre-vious election cycles, around 22% by some estimates. (New York Times, 2014)
In January and February 2015, one year after the elections, there was another spike in violence. 104 fatalities related to political party violence occurred during those months. Much of the violence centered on hartal (strike) blockades that occurred throughout the country. Movement was shut-down throughout the country through violent means. Petrol bombs and arson attacks targeted auto rickshaw and truck drivers throughout the country. (Daily Star, 2015) While ACLED data does not track the number of arrests, some news outlets reported that around 7,000 people were arrest-ed in January of 2015 alone. (The Guardian, 2015) The remainder of 2015 saw a large decrease in political violence.
Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam
Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, and Vietnam all have the low-est political violence event counts in South and Southeast Asia. For the summer of 2017, Cambodia and Indonesia have both recorded 19 events total. Vietnam has recorded 14 events, while Laos has recorded two. It is not uncom-mon for Vietnam and Laos to record no events over the course of a month.
While ACLED only began recorded events for Indonesia in May 2017, data collection for Cambodia, Laos, and Vi-etnam began in January 2015. Most of the events recorded since then for these three countries were riots and protests, with low fatality rates per month (no more than 10). Laos has the lowest event count of the three countries, with 27 out of 30 months recording no activity at all.
Myanmar
In October 2015, the Myanmar government and eight rebel groups (The All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF), Arakan Liberation Party, Chin National Front (CNF), Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), Karen National Liberation Army Peace Council, Karen National Union (KNU), Pa-O National Liberation Organi-zation and Shan State Army-South (SSA-S)) signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA). Several other rebel groups either refused to sign the agreement or were not included by the government in the peace process (United Wa State Army, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Shan State Army-North (SSA-N), Myanmar Na-tional Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA)). The exclusion of these large rebel groups, and the terms under which the NCA was signed, has led to concern over the sustainability of the peace process in Myanmar.
But, despite such concern, political violence throughout the country has decreased since October 2015 and maintained low levels. It has also shifted slightly from the east to west. ACLED maps show that the conflict in 2015 occurred mainly in Kachin and Shan states in the west, with some events in Rakhine and Chin states in the east. (ACLED 2016) In 2016, after the NCA was signed, political vio-lence decreased by 100 events in Shan state in the west and increased slightly in Rakhine state in the east. (Myanmar Peace Monitor 2016, Figure 4 a & b) More than half of all events that occurred in Rakhine state occurred in the final three months of 2016. This increase was due to multiple attacks on police outposts on October 9, 2016 and the My-anmar army’s response. (The Irrawaddy, 2016) Following the attacks, the Myanmar army launched a large-scale op-eration resulting in 25 casualties in total in 2016.