Photo: Collected
Videos have surfaced on social media platforms showing that the Myanmar military is providing training to Rohingyas under the compulsory conscription law, which is driving thousands of Myanmarese youths to flee to Thailand and Malaysia to avoid joining the military.
People who appear to be Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State undergo weapons training by junta military personnel on March 10, 2024. The Rohingyas not recognised as citizens of Myanmar are known as ‘Muslims’.
Rohingyas were delisted from citizenship in 1982 under a discriminatory Citizenship Law, which requires individuals to prove that their ancestors lived in Myanmar before 1823, and refuses to recognise Rohingya Muslims as one of the nation's ethnic communities, nor is their language recognised as a national language. According to the United Nations, the Rohingyas in Myanmar are stateless persons.
On February 10, the junta imposed a military draft law – officially called the People’s Military Service Law – prompting civilians of fighting age to flee Myanmar’s cities, reports Radio Free Asia (RFA).
The males between the ages of 18 and 35 and the females between 18 and 27 have been picked up from several Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) townships.
Based on Myanmar’s 2019 interim census, at least 13 million people are eligible for military service. Refusing to be conscripted would face five years in prison.
Details have emerged regarding the forced recruitment of internally displaced ‘Muslims’ into the junta’s forces in southern Rakhine State last month, including the alleged presence of minors among the conscripts, allured in return for cash and citizenship documents.
Reports suggest the junta has been forcibly recruiting Rohingyas in Rakhine in recent weeks, and residents told RFA Burmese that the video shows members of the ethnic group receiving training at a site in the north of the state, although they were unable to provide an exact location.
They said that junta personnel have detained and enlisted around 700 Rohingyas for military training from the Rakhine townships of Buthidaung, Maungdaw and Kyaukphyu, as well as the capital Sittwe, since the 10 February announcement, to form a militia.
On several occasions in late February, soldiers and junta-appointed administrators visited the IDP camp in Kyaukphyu Township, meeting with camp elders and management and announcing plans to enforce conscription to serve in the military Tatmadaw.
Some 150 junta soldiers rounded up approximately 127 men and boys in the camp on 28 February 28 and transported them to training camps, reports Myanmar Now, a resistance media outlet.
The junta has sought to downplay the announcement, claiming that conscription won’t go into effect until April, but RFA has received credible information indicating that forced recruitment is already underway.
Two videos emerged on Facebook over the weekend showing junta troops training a group of people wearing full military uniforms in the use of firearms and around 30 armed people wearing fatigues inside of a military vehicle. They were posted to the site with a description that identified the subjects as Rohingyas.
A third video, posted on March 7, shows junta Rakhine State Security and Border Affairs Minister Co. Kyaw Thura visiting a warehouse where hundreds of people, believed to be Rohingyas, are seated in military attire.
However, RFA was unable to verify the content of the videos independently.
Former military captain Nyi Thuta, who now advises the armed resistance as part of the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement, questioned why the military regime is forcibly recruiting the Rohingya when legal doors are shut to grant them citizenship.
"These people are being coerced and manipulated in various ways into fighting to the death for the junta, which is facing defeat in [the civil] war,” he said.
Junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun was quoted in the state-run newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar on February 15 as saying that 50,000 soldiers will be recruited every year that the law is in effect.
Some 1.2 million Rohingya refugees have been languishing in squalid camps in Bangladesh since 2017 after they were victims of ethnic-cleansing perpetrated by Myanmar’s Tatmadaw.
Another 630,000 people living within Myanmar are designated stateless by the United Nations, including those who languish in IDP camps and are restricted from moving freely in Rakhine state.
Rights campaigners say the junta is drafting Rohingya into military service to stoke ethnic tensions in Rakhine, while legal experts say the drive is unlawful, given that Myanmar has refused to recognise the Rohingya as one of the country’s ethnic groups and denied them citizenship for decades, reports RFA.
Myanmar’s military is desperate for recruits after suffering devastating losses on the battlefield to the ethnic Arakan Army, or AA, in Rakhine state. Since November, when the AA launched an operation to evict the military junta, the military has surrendered Pauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw, Myay Pon and Taung Pyo townships in the state, as well as Paletwa township in neighbouring Chin state.
On February 28, the official daily newspaper claimed that Rohingya had not been recruited for military service because they weren’t citizens.
Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, condemned the coercion of members of his ethnic group into military service as a “war crime.”
“They wield power and resort to coercion and arrests,” he said, adding that he believes the junta’s goal is to “obliterate the Rohingya community.”
The exiled National Unity Government (NUG) was formed after Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown in a bloodless military coup in February 2023.
Earlier this month, the NUG warned that Rohingya were being pressed into duty by the military “because there is no way to escape” for them.
Messenger/Disha
