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.