The Rohingya under pressure: imprisoned, without citizenship, but forced to join the Burmese a

agenzia fides
Friday, 5 April 2024 

Sittwe (Agenzia Fides) - In order to replenish its ranks, decimated by combat losses, the Myanmar army is resorting to the forced recruitment of young men from the Rohingya people and sending them to the front in the fight against the Arakan Army, an ethnic militia that is resisting in Rakhine State, the Burmese state where the Rohingya, a discriminated and marginalized Muslim population in Myanmar, are traditionally based. As Rohingya organizations in the diaspora, including the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK and the Free Rohingya Coalition, report, “the Burmese regime has deliberately forcibly recruited the Rohingya because they are particularly vulnerable. They cannot escape due to movement restrictions imposed by the junta. Rakhine State is, so to speak, an open-air prison for the Rohingya. The junta considers them expendable. It is a cruel way to send the Rohingya to their deaths." At least a thousand young Rohingya men - around half of them internally displaced persons - have been forcibly recruited by the Burmese army in recent weeks. They were abducted from their homes, villages, markets and displaced persons camps and taken to army bases where they received military training. After two weeks of military training, the young men were armed and forced to wear Burmese military uniforms and sent to the front lines in Rakhine State. Non-governmental organizations fear that dozens of people have been killed, "although the exact number of victims is difficult to verify due to the news blackouts imposed by the regime in this region." Other internally displaced Rohingya who have returned to Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, after military training will be called to the front lines if necessary. In February last year, the Burmese regime announced that it would implement the 2010 law on compulsory military service. But in the case of the Rohingya, who were deprived of their citizenship by a 1982 law and thus have no protection or recognized rights, there would be no legal basis to impose compulsory military service on them. 

 

British banks under pressure over £45m loans to firm with links to Myanmar military

The Guardian

The ObserverMyanmar
Jamie Doward
Sun 20 Dec 2020

Campaigners say the deals revealed in new report are a breach of firms’ human rights responsibilities

The report says companies ‘have human-rights due-diligence responsibilities [in Myanmar] that they have breached’. Photograph: Ye Aung Thu/AFP via Getty Image 

Human rights groups are demanding that two of Britain’s biggest banks explain why they have lent tens of millions of pounds to a technology company building a telecoms network that is part-owned and used by the Myanmar military.

HSBC and Standard Chartered have loaned $60m (£44.5m) to Vietnamese telecom giant Viettel in the last four years, a period when the Myanmar military has been accused of committing war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Viettel is a major investor in Mytel, a Myanmar mobile network that, since its launch in June 2018, has grown to become the second-biggest operator in the country with over 10 million users.

Myanmar Military Says Police Missing After Rebel. Attack

The New York Times

By The Associated Press
May 29, 2020

 

YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s military said Friday that 10 members of the paramilitary Border Guard Police are missing along with three of their family members after a predawn attack allegedly by the Arakan Army, an ethnic rebel group.

A statement on the website of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defense Services said about 100 members of the rebel force, which claims to represent the Buddhist ethnic Rakhine minority, attacked a police post in Rakhine state’s Rathedaung township shortly after 2 a.m. Friday.