It asks for their help over seven years after the UN called for “textbook ethnic cleansing,” in which the military of Myanmar slaughtered hundreds of Muslim Rohingyas.
Through interviews with them, the BBC has learned that in recent weeks, at least 100 Rohingyas living in Rakhine State were forced to fight for the embattled junta. All of their names have been changed to protect them.
Mohammed, a 31-year-old father of three young Rohingya children, said, “I was scared, but I had to go.” He lives in the Baw Du Pha camp near Rakhine’s capital, Sittwe. At least 150,000 internally displaced Rohingyas have been forced to live in camps throughout the previous ten years.
Mohammed alleged that the camp leader told him late one night in the middle of February that he would have to go through military training. He remembers him saying, “These are army orders.” “They’ve threatened to hurt your family if you refuse.”
The BBC confirmed that army soldiers had been visiting the camps and ordering the younger boys to report for military training after speaking with several Rohingyas.
Myanmar
The terrible irony for men like Mohammed is that Rohingyas in Myanmar are still subjected to discriminatory restrictions, like being denied citizenship and being unable to leave their communities.
Following their expulsion from mixed communities in Rakhine State in 2012, tens of thousands of Rohingyas were forced to live in filthy camps. August 2017 marked the beginning of the army’s deadly clearance operation against them, which lasted five years and resulted in hundreds of deaths, rapes, and village fires. Consequently, 700,000 of them escaped to Bangladesh, a neighbour. About 600,000 of them are still present.
Myanmar is presently accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague as a result of its treatment of the Rohingyas.
Given that the army just lost significant areas of Rakhine to the Arakan Army, an ethnic insurgent group, it is evident how desperate it is that the same army is now pressuring them to enlist. Dozens of Rohingyas have died in Rakhine as a result of airstrikes and military machinery.
The military has also suffered significant losses at the hands of opposition organisations in other parts of the country; on Saturday, it lost control of Myawaddy, a town close to the eastern border with Thailand. Most of the country’s overland traffic travels this vital route.
The junta has also suffered a great deal of military losses. Finding their replacements is difficult because they have been killed, maimed, given up to the resistance, or surrendered. Few people want to risk their lives to back an unpopular government.
The Rohingyas believe that the reason they are still being targeted is because they are seen as mere props in the regime’s losing war against them.
Myanmar
Mohammed said he was driven to the headquarters of the 270th Light Infantry Battalion in Sittwe. The Rohingya people is not permitted to live in the town since they were driven out after the communal violence in 2012.
He said, “We were taught how to load bullets and shoot.” “They demonstrated how to disassemble and reassemble a gun for us as well.”
In a video that the BBC was able to get, another group of Rohingya conscripts is seen being taught how to shoot BA 63 rifles, an older standard weapon used by the Myanmar military.
Mohammed was returned home following a two-week training period. But he got a call to come back in only two days. Along with 250 other men, he boarded a boat and was transported five hours upriver to Rathedaung, where he engaged the Arakan Army in combat over control of three strategically significant military locations atop hills.
“I didn’t seem to be fighting for anything. When instructed, I would shoot at a Rakhine community.
He fought for eleven days there. They were severely malnourished when a shell collapsed their supply shack. He was sent back to Sittwe for medical assistance after seeing several Rohingya conscripts slain by shelling and receiving shrapnel wounds to both legs.
Images from the combat were uploaded by the Arakan Army on March 20, following their takeover of the three outposts. At least three of the dead in the photos may be identified as Rohingyas.
The entire time I was in the middle of the fight, I was scared. Mohammed said, “I couldn’t help but think of my family.” “I never thought I would have to engage in combat of that nature. My only goal was to return home. When I got home from the hospital, I hugged my mother and cried. I felt as though I had been born again inside my mother.
Another conscript, Hussain, came from the Ohn Taw Gyi camp, which is near Sittwe. He was hauled away in February, according to his brother Mahmoud, and completed his military training; nevertheless, he absconded into hiding before he could be deployed to combat.
The military denies using the Rohingyas as a fighting force against the Arakan Army. General Zaw Min Tun, the junta’s spokesperson, told the BBC that they weren’t meant to be deployed to combat zones. He said, “We have asked them to help with their own defence because we want to ensure their safety.”
Seven Rohingyas, however, who talked with the BBC from five different IDP camps near Sittwe, all said the same thing: they know of at least 100 Rohingyas who have been recruited and sent to fight this year.
Soldiers and officials from the local administration reportedly paid the camps a visit in February to tell the younger men that they would be drafted. At first, the announcement was made with the assurance that individuals who enlisted would receive food, wages, and citizenship. These were powerful lures.
Food in the IDP camps has become increasingly expensive and scarce as a result of the Arakan Army’s disruption of international humanitarian shipments. Human rights organisations have likened the systematic discrimination faced by the Rohingyas in Myanmar, where they have long struggled for acceptance, to apartheid. Part of the cause for this prejudice is the denial of citizenship.
However, the citizenship offer was rescinded when the army returned to take the enlisted men out of service. When the camp residents questioned why they, as non-citizens, should be subject to conscription, they were told that they had an obligation to defend their home. They were promised that they would not be soldiers, but militiamen. When they asked about the offer of citizenship, they were told, “You misunderstood.”
Now, according to one camp committee member, the army is asking for new lists of potential recruits. He claimed that after seeing and hearing from the first group of front-line survivors, none of the others were ready to risk being enlisted.
The camp authorities are now trying to persuade the poorest men—those without jobs—to leave by pledging to support their families while they are overseas with money raised from other prisoners.
Human rights campaigner Matthew Smith declared, “This conscription campaign is more akin to forced labour and is illegal.” Strengthen the Rights.
There is a harsh and perverse utility to what is happening. The military is conscripting victims of the Rohingya genocide in an attempt to avert a democratic revolution in the country. According to this government, human life is unimportant. These mistreatments are being added to its extensive record of offences and acquittals.
By utilising Rohingyas in its battles against the Arakan Army, the Myanmar military, which is strongly backed by the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist minority, fears rekindling communal unrest with them.
Tens of thousands of Rohingyas had to leave places like Sittwe in 2012 as a result of hostilities between the two groups. In 2017, men of ethnic Rakhine origin took part in army raids against the Rohingyas.
Tensions between the two communities have reduced since then.
Along with other ethnic armies and opposition parties, the Arakan Army is fighting for autonomy as part of a larger movement to overthrow the military junta and build a new, federal government in Myanmar.
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