‘Nowhere to run’ for Muslims forcibly sent to military training in southern Rakhine State

Further 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, and offers of payment for those with citizenship documents. On several occasions in late February, soldiers and junta-appointed administrators visited the Kyauktalone internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camp in Kyaukphyu Township, meeting with camp elders and management and announcing plans to enforce a conscription law requiring all eligible men between 18 and 35 to serve in the armed forces. Some 150 junta personnel rounded up approximately 127 men and boys in the camp on On February 28, transporting them in three military trucks to the nearby base of Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 542. The unit operates under the command of the Taungup-based Military Operations Command 5, under the Western Regional Military Command. The Kyauktalone camp is located in an open field three miles south of Kyaukphyu town and houses around 1,000 families—mostly ethnic Kaman Muslims, and some Rohingya. They have been living at the heavily restricted site since being forced out of Kyaukphyu’s urban wards some 12 years ago by military-backed violence against the religious minority. “Men hid in houses but the military threatened to beat them if they didn’t come out. They were then forced into trucks,” a resident of Kyauktalone said, adding that an officer from LIB 542 claimed that the junta was training these men because they “have faith in the Muslim people.” The men and boys were reportedly told that they were being recruited for “militia training.” The junta, facing an urgent need for manpower, has organised civilian militia groups across the country, equipping them with weapons, and deploying them alongside soldiers and police in attacks and raids. As their two weeks of instruction—including how to operate firearms—nears its end, the residents of Kyauktalone have been told that they would be compensated with a monthly salary of 500,000 kyat (US$238) if they are holders of national identification cards. While ethnic Kaman may hold such ID, many in Kyauktalone and other IDP camps do not, and the Rohingya are systematically denied standard identity documents and citizenship in Myanmar. Five of those forced into the training from Kyauktalone were minors, according to local sources, and 20 are in their 40s and 50s, placing them outside of the requirements of the conscription law. The recruits are said to be picked up as a group daily for training at 7am and returned home at 4pm. They will reportedly be allowed the upcoming holy month of Ramadan off, but will be expected to begin their military service afterwards, in mid-April. “We have nowhere to run to and no road to flee on. Everything is blocked,” said the wife of one of the men, explaining why Kyauktalone residents feel they cannot resist conscription. Dozens of young men who did not want to join the junta army fled the camp, pretending to go fishing, but seeking shelter with the Arakan Army, which is fighting the military. The ethnic Rakhine armed organisation’s spokesperson Khaing Thukha said in a March 4 press conference that the junta likely planned to use the Muslim men as human shields and incite interethnic conflict in the state. The military arrested the family members of those that escaped, and at the time of reporting, their condition and whereabouts were not known. Aung Kyaw Moe, deputy minister of human rights for Myanmar’s publicly mandated National Unity Government and a Rohingya activist, told Myanmar Now that the military was committing war crimes by taking advantage of persecuted and trapped civilians in Rakhine State. “By forcibly recruiting people with no place to run, the military continues to commit war crimes with their genocidal tendencies intact,” he explained. Junta spokesperson Gen Zaw Min Tun has repeatedly denied that Muslims in Rakhine State have been forced to undergo mandatory army training. However, a video recently went viral of the military council’s minister of security and border affairs for Rakhine State, Brig-Gen Kyaw Thiha, conducting a “security check” on hundreds of uniformed men sitting in line in a hall, some of whom were heard to be speaking the Rohingya language to one another. Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify the location where the footage was filmed.

‘Nowhere to run’ for Muslims forcibly sent to military training in southern Rakhine State

As residents of a Kyaukphyu Township IDP camp conclude training they were made to undergo by the junta, questions remain about when their conscription will start and what it will entail

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