As war escalates in northern Rakhine, Rohingya have no allies

Rakhine State’s remaining Rohingya population—denied citizenship and freedom of movement—is increasingly trapped in a war between the Myanmar army and the Arakan Army (AA), members of the community have warned. “The whole of Rakhine State, for the Rohingyas, is like an open-air prison,” UK-based Rohingya human rights activist Tun Khin told Myanmar Now on March 29. “I can’t find the words to describe the danger that is facing [them]. It’s at a very high level.” The AA, the ethnic Rakhine armed group that has been waging an offensive against the military in Rakhine State since last November, has captured all of northern Rakhine State from the junta except for Buthidaung and neighbouring Maungdaw townships, which border Bangladesh to the north. Both townships have significant Rohingya populations, despite years of intensifying military pogroms aimed at forcing the community out of the country, where they are not recognised as Myanmar nationals. This repression is part of an ongoing genocide that peaked in 2017 with massive so-called “clearance operations” by the Myanmar army that involved the razing of Rohingya villages and seizure of their land, widespread murder and sexual violence, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people across the border into Bangladesh, where they now live in sprawling refugee camps. Meanwhile, east of the state capital Sittwe, in Minbya Township, a massive March 18 air assault killed more than 20 people in the Rohingya village of Thar Dar, even though no fighting had been reported in the area at the time. Rohingya residents told Myanmar Now that they believed they were again targeted by the junta because they are Muslims. Since announcing last month that it would begin enforcing a long-dormant conscription law, the same military that has long persecuted the Rohingya community has rounded up hundreds of young Rohingya and other Muslim men in Rakhine State and trained them to fight. In and near Sittwe, almost 100 people living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) were forced into military service, five of whom died in recent clashes with the AA in Rathedaung Township, south of Buthidaung. “It is a situation where a massive number of Rohingyas could be killed because of forced recruitment, where Rohingyas will be used as human shields,” Tun Khin said. According to Myint Lwin, a resident of Buthidaung using a pseudonym for security reasons, a regime army camp has already been set up in the town for a total of 500 trainees. Of these, most will be assigned to their home villages as militia members, while 50 will reportedly serve as commandos under direct military command, he said. Rohingya villagers were told that these measures were being taken for their own good, he added. But when a village elder asked an army officer if participants would be granted citizenship for cooperating with the regime, he was told that the weapons they had received were worth more than ID cards. Guns and training are about all the military is providing; villagers are responsible for everything else, including food and pay for the new recruits, according to Myint Lwin. They also have to be prepared to perform any labour demanded by the military. “It’s not just the recruits. Ordinary villagers also have to ‘volunteer’ to dig trenches for the military. They have no choice but to do as they are told,” he said. Three newly arrived Rohingya refugees try to swim to shore after being stranded on a boat; a nearby community gave them food and water but did not allow them to land in Indonesia’s Pineung, Aceh province on November 16, 2023 (Amanda Jufrian / AFP) ‘Like a stick used to play a game’ Buthidaung has also become the most recent focus of the AA’s push to establish itself across northern Rakhine State, on Monday capturing the base of the military’s Infantry Battalion 552 in the township, as well as a police station in Maungdaw. “To the military, we’re just like a stick they use to play a game. But we’re not just caught between two sides: there’s also a third armed group that we have to worry about,” Myint Lwin added. In September of last year—before the start of the current conflict—the AA raided a number of Rohingya villages in Buthidaung and Maungdaw to arrest members of “criminal gangs” affiliated with a group whose existence the Myanmar military used as justification for the genocidal violence against the Rohingya community in 2017: the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). The Myanmar army cited alleged assaults by ARSA on its Rakhine-Bangladesh border outposts in August of that year when launching scorched earth operations that terrorised the Rohingya population and forced hundreds of thousands of people out of the country. Those claiming to be ARSA affiliates have gained a reputation in recent years for abusing Rohingya living in Bangladeshi refugee camps, and the group has been accused of engaging in a variety of crimes, from extortion and human trafficking to kidnapping and murder. More recently, the group is said to have re-established a presence in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships, where Rohingya residents say it also operates more as a criminal outfit than as a militant group. In claims from the ground that Myanmar Now was unable to independently corroborate, several local Rohingya sources suggested that people claiming to represent ARSA had—in order to gain influence—been collaborating with the junta, whose forces find themselves largely confined to their bases in Rakhine but continue to face major territorial and political threats from the AA. When asked about these alleged links, international Rohingya rights activist Tun Khin emphasised that such information remains “hard to verify” due to a junta-imposed blackout of internet and phone communications in much of the region in question, as well as the sensitivity of the issue. A March 19 protest in Buthidaung saw around 100 Rohingya, some as young as 10 years old, holding signs and shouting slogans denouncing the AA; the event was widely publicised on pro-junta social media accounts and was generally seen as part of a propaganda effort by the regime to use the Rohingya to counter the AA’s stated goal of taking full control of Rakhine State. “Military informers and ARSA were both involved in forcing innocent Rohingya villagers to take part in the protest,” said Ali (not his real name), a 38-year-old resident of Buthidaung who claimed to have knowledge of the group’s links to the military. He added that the junta even threatened to shell villages whose inhabitants refused to participate, and that the demands on the Rohingya community were typical of the regime’s long strategy of divide-and-rule. “I think they are trying to stir up violence between the two communities again,” Ali said, referring to the Rohingya and the Rakhine. “We don’t want to be involved in this at all,” said Kyaw Myint, another Rohingya man from Buthidaung. “We don’t need anything else to make our lives even more difficult,” he added, questioning whether the military had allowed the group to establish a recent presence in Rakhine State because the two sides had formed a partnership of sorts—one that benefits both, but victimises ordinary Rohingya. “Their actions towards us have never been anything but violent,” he said. Buthidaung resident Myint Lwin cited a conversation with a peer who took part in the military-backed Buthidaung protest after being urged to do so by other Rohingya with reported ties to the army. “A Myanmar military officer told the Rohingya that they were in trouble because of the Rakhine people,” he explained. “They were told they should protest in order to prevent war.” Rohingya men gather at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar in August 2022 to protest on the five year anniversary of genocidal violence that forced them to leave Myanmar (EPA) ‘We are worried about how we will survive’ On March 26, AA commander-in-chief Twan Mrat Naing referred to the Rohingya as “Bengalis” on social media platform X—formerly known as Twitter—using a term that the community has long rejected and considers derogatory due to its implication that they originally come from Bangladesh and are not part of Myanmar. “Nothing is wrong with calling Bengalis ‘Bengalis,’” he said, adding that they have been “our neighbours and friends for centuries.” In Burmese, Twan Mrat Naing said that Rakhine people are referred to as “Mogh” in the “Bengali language” but that “we Rakhine have never demanded to change the language.” “You can call us ‘Mogh.’ It is not freaking genocide,” he later wrote on the platform on March 28. Tun Khin, the Rohingya activist, condemned the AA leader’s dismissal of these concerns and the use of this terminology to describe the Rohingya as “very worrying.” “When you are talking about your neighbour, you should respect them enough to use their names like our name, Rohingya, and not Bengali,” he told Myanmar Now. “What we want in Arakan State is peaceful coexistence between Rohingya and Rakhine communities on equal terms, rooted in dignity and respect for our identity.” Buthidaung local Ali has placed his hope for the future in fellow Rakhine civilian victims of the military regime and the fact that the AA has made some effort to reach out to the Rohingya community: in early March, the AA offered to protect Rohingya youth fleeing conscription into the Myanmar army. “I would like to ask the Rakhine community and the AA leaders to wisely and carefully consider the situation and act with restraint,” Ali said. “We civilians all want to live in peace, but we are worried about how we will survive this situation,” he added. “Due to the worsening safety and security, we are constantly anxious. That’s why I never leave my home these days,” said a 21-year-old Rohingya woman, recalling the horrific violence of 2017, which saw many women—including some of her own relatives—raped and murdered by Myanmar army soldiers. Rohingya villagers remain reluctant to leave northern Rakhine, fearing that if they do, they will find themselves facing even greater hardships. “We’re afraid we will never be able to come back if we leave our homes— just like those who fled in 2017,” Myint Lwin explained, adding that most regard life in an IDP or refugee camp, with severely restricted freedom and no livelihood, even worse than the difficulty and uncertainty that they already face. “None of us can sleep now due to fear and worry that something might happen. We are in a situation where any group could take advantage of us for political reasons,” he said.

As war escalates in northern Rakhine, Rohingya have no allies

As the Myanmar military deploys sinister divide-and-rule tactics in its fight against the Arakan Army, Rohingya civilians with nowhere to run question how they will survive

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