As Rakhine State war intensifies, an island town resists conscription and struggles with scarcity

While a devastating war rages across most of Rakhine State, the 500-square kilometre island of Manaung in the Bay of Bengal, and its 57,000 inhabitants, have remained largely untouched by violence. Some six miles from Rakhine State’s coast, the island—also known as Cheduba Island—is accessible only by boat ride from the state’s Ramree and Taungup townships. Its inhabitants, like all Myanmar nationals, are subject to the new mandatory military service policy that the Myanmar regime plans to implement in full this month as the army trains its first batch of conscripts. Administrators in Manaung, however, have rebuffed directives from the regime to select seven people from each of the town’s wards for military service. After most administrators ignored the regime’s orders, which came in the first week of March, local media outlets reported that junta police threatened a village administrator on Sunday that he would face consequences himself if he did not turn people over to the authorities for military service. A 35-year-old woman living in Manaung, who asked to remain anonymous due to security concerns, said that the town’s inhabitants depend on food brought to the island by boat from Ramree and Taungup townships, located on or near the coastline. View from Manaung Island’s seashore (Photo: Facebook/Manaung Natural Island) While only young men face the immediate threat of coerced recruitment, she said, all civilians on the island are vulnerable to food insecurity should the authorities cut off supplies. Although the people of Thandwe and Manaung townships in southern Rakhine State have largely enjoyed peace and escaped the effects of the war ravaging the state’s other townships, the relative calm has left regime authorities unhindered in their efforts to enforce the conscription policy. Desperate to escape conscription, some young men have fled to other countries by boat despite the risks, according to the 35-year-old Manaung resident, while others have sought to hide in areas of the island reputed to be safe from the authorities. “Most men don’t dare stay in their homes anymore since the junta demanded that the local ward administrators record their names for conscription,” she said. “Without men at home, we women have to confront more threats to our lives and our dignity.” “The absence of the men is noticeable,” she added. “And as well as having to worry about them, we have to worry about ourselves and our safety.” Since fighting resumed in mid-November between the Myanmar regime’s forces and the Arakan Army (AA)—Rakhine State’s largest and most powerful ethnic armed group—the junta has blocked roads into the state and cut off food supplies, electric power, and internet and mobile phone service. The junta has also imposed fishing bans in Rakhine State, depriving the Manaung islanders of one of their only alternative sources of sustenance even as food supplies brought from Ramree and Taungup have slowed. Other essential goods such as medicines, fuel, fish paste, salt, onions, garlic, and cooking oil are scarce, the woman in Manaung said, and even women’s sanitary pads have become nearly impossible to find. “Even if you find them, the prices are ten times what they were before,” she added. “Those of us living hand to mouth are facing severe food insecurity, pushing us almost to the brink of starvation. I have not cooked fish or meat for a long time. It used to be part of our daily meal.” Another resident of Manaung, a 25-year-old woman who also requested anonymity, said that the town had been quiet. However, before the AA took full control of Ramree, she used to notice fighter jets flying overhead and hear the sounds of battle from the coastal town. “I used to fear for the people in Ramree. Now we live in fear of the war coming to us,” she said. Like the 35-year-old Manaung resident, she said that reduced boat traffic to the island had driven up prices and aggravated the scarcity of food. “Prices have shot up, and people can’t afford groceries anymore,” she said. “I have not eaten a snack or had a soft drink for a long time.” While fighting has not broken out on the island yet, the Myanmar military has deployed some 80 troops to the town in an effort to enforce the junta’s new conscription policy. According to one man in Manaung, who is 33 years old and in the eligible age range for conscription, their presence has made everyone tense. While local administrators have resisted cooperating with the junta’s orders, people on Manaung Island remain worried that the troops may simply start dragging people from their homes and forcing them into military service. “Ever since the order came most men—including me—have not slept in our own homes,” the man said. “We saw who men were forced into the army in Rathedaung,” he added, referring to a township in northern Rakhine State. “We could be sent straight into combat. That’s why we’re fleeing our homes.” Rumours have also circulated about soldiers searching villages and properties for makeshift bomb shelters dug by civilians in outlying areas of Manaung Township, forcing villagers to fill them in when they find them. Junta troops have performed similar operations elsewhere in Rakhine State such as Kyaukphyu Township, nearer to the ongoing battles. “We don’t really know what to do,” the man said. “It feels like we’re trapped because we can’t just run away from this island.” The AA has now captured eight of Rakhine State’s 17 townships as well as Paletwa Township, Chin State, but it has not come near Manaung Island. While the residents are grateful for the peace and calm, they also fear that if the military does start to make trouble for civilians, the AA may not be available to defend Manaung due to its inaccessibility and distance from the rest of the state. “We are hearing that the AA would not risk its members to establish control of Manaung, which does not hold much strategic importance for them,” the 33-year-old man said. If fighting were to break out on the island, it would result in a humanitarian disaster, the 35-year-old woman said, because Manaung’s inaccessibility would make it nearly impossible for aid organisations to respond efficiently or bring enough medical and other supplies in an urgent crisis. Manaung is small, she noted, adding that a few 500-pound bombs is all you would need to destroy it. “Since we have no way to escape, all of us on this island would just be killed,” she said. “That’s what makes us worry.” However, the people of Manaung still hope to be part of a Rakhine State freed from the Myanmar military regime. “Come what may, we want to join the rest of our people and we don’t want to live under military rule,” she said. “We want to be liberated.”

As Rakhine State war intensifies, an island town resists conscription and struggles with scarcity

As they defy Myanmar’s reactivated military service law, civilians on Manaung (Cheduba) Island face rising prices and growing food instability despite their remoteness from the fighting between junta and AA forces

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