Myanmar’s army massacred Rohingyas
BBC Online :
From interviews with Rohingyas living in Rakhine State the BBC has learned of at least 100 of them being conscripted in recent weeks to fight for the embattled junta. All their names have been changed to protect them.
“I was frightened, but I had to go,” says Mohammed, a 31-year-old Rohingya man with three young children. He lives near the capital of Rakhine, Sittwe, in the Baw Du Pha camp. At least 150,000 internally displaced Rohingyas have been forced to live in IDP camps for the past decade.
In the middle of February the camp leader came to him late at night, Mohammed said, and told him he would have to do military training. “These are army orders,” he remembers him saying. “If you refuse they have threatened to harm your family.”
The BBC has spoken to several Rohingyas who have confirmed that army officers have been going around the camps and ordering the younger men to report for military training.
The terrible irony for men like Mohammed is that Rohingyas in Myanmar are still denied citizenship, and subjected to a range of discriminatory restrictions – like a ban on travel outside their communities.
In 2012 tens of thousands of Rohingyas were driven out of mixed communities in Rakhine State, and forced to live in squalid camps.
Five years later, in August 2017, 700,000 fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, after the army launched a brutal clearance operation against them, killing and raping thousands and burning their villages. Some 600,000 of them still remain there.
Myanmar is now facing a genocide trial at the International Court of Justice in the Hague over its treatment of the Rohingyas.
That the same army is now forcibly recruiting them is a telling sign of its desperation, after losing huge swathes of territory in Rakhine recently to an ethnic insurgent group called the Arakan Army.
Dozens of Rohingyas in Rakhine have been killed by military artillery and aerial bombardments.
The military has also suffered significant losses to opposition forces in other parts of the country – on Saturday it lost control of Myawaddy, a town on the eastern border with Thailand. Most of the country’s overland trade passes through this vital route.
The junta has lost large numbers of soldiers as well. They have been killed, wounded, surrendered or defected to the opposition, and finding replacements is difficult. Few want to risk their lives propping up an unpopular regime.
And the Rohingyas fear that is the reason they are being targeted again – to be cannon fodder in a war the junta seems to be losing.
Mohammed said he was driven to the base of the 270th Light Infantry Battalion in Sittwe. Rohingyas have been prohibited from living in the town since they were driven out during the 2012 communal violence.
“We were taught how to load bullets and shoot,” he said. “They also showed us how to disassemble and reassemble a gun.”
In a video seen by the BBC another group of Rohingya conscripts can be seen being taught how to use BA 63 rifles, an older standard weapon used by the Myanmar armed forces.
Mohammed was trained for two weeks, then sent home. But after just two days he was called back, and put on a boat with 250 other soldiers and transported five hours up-river to Rathedaung, where a fierce battle with the Arakan Army was under way for control of three hilltop military bases.
“I had no idea why I was fighting. When they told me to shoot at a Rakhine village, I would shoot.”
He fought there for 11 days. They were desperately short of food, after a shell fell on their supply hut. He saw several Rohingya conscripts killed by artillery and he was injured by shrapnel in both legs, and taken back to Sittwe for treatment.
On 20 March the Arakan Army released photos from the battle, after it had taken control of the three bases, showing several corpses, at least three of them identified as Rohingyas.
“While I was in the middle of the battle I was terrified the whole time. I kept thinking about my family,” Mohammed said. “I never thought I would have to go to war like that. I just wanted to go home. When I got home from the hospital I hugged my mother and cried. It felt like being born again from my mother’s womb.”
Another conscript was Hussain, from Ohn Taw Gyi camp, which is also near Sittwe. His brother Mahmoud says he was taken away in February and completed his military training, but he went into hiding before they could send him to the front line.
The military denies using Rohingyas to fight its battles with the Arakan Army. General Zaw Min Tun, the junta spokesman, told the BBC that there was no plan to send them to the front line. “We want to ensure their safety, so we have asked them to help with their own defence,” he said.
