Sofura Begum, a mother of Rohingya refugees, fled Myanmar and lived for years in a filthy camp. Her adolescent son has now been sent to fight alongside the soldiers who placed her there.
Hundreds of young Rohingya men and boys have been coerced into joining militant groups in Bangladesh that support the Arakan Army, a rebel group in neighboring Myanmar that has won several battles against the local regime.
In a 2017 crackdown that is currently the focus of an ongoing UN genocide court case, the military drove 750,000 members of the persecuted Muslim minority from their homes and into Bangladesh. Those sent to fight are joining forces with the military in this common cause.
Terrorists are using the Myanmar army as an ally against the Rohingya people in order to combat a new threat.
However, the relatives of those who were forced into battle claim that they were not given an option.
Begum, 30, told AFP that after her 15-year-old son Abdul was taken away from her home by armed men, “they told us to hand him over.”
“They made us feel threatened… It’s our struggle of faith, they said. My son wasn’t going to fight in the war. But things are scary where we are.”
Six families that AFP contacted with claimed that men in their home had been coerced into joining three armed Rohingya gangs that were well-established in the camps.
Speaking to AFP under pseudonymity out of fear of reprisals, one man claimed that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) had abducted his 20-year-old son and sent him across the border to fight.
The man added, “I found out he was hurt in the war.”
It’s disgusting that my son was enlisted without his will. Our people are being picked up on a daily basis.”
“Destruction of our people.”
Huge tracts of land have been lost by the Arakan Army, one of several rebel factions fighting the junta that seized power in a coup in 2021, against the military of Myanmar this year.
In addition to housing over 600,000 Rohingya who stayed behind following the 2017 crackdown, the state is home to the ethnic Rakhine people, which the Arakan Army claims is fighting for greater autonomy.
This month, the rebel group seized over Buthidaung, a town near Bangladesh with a large Rohingya population.
The Arakan Army referred to the assertions made by a number of Rohingya diaspora groups in their statement as “propaganda”: that fighters pushed the Rohingya to escape before plundering and burning their homes.
The Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO), another armed group in the camps in Bangladesh, claimed to have enlisted refugees for combat.
“Our people have been tortured and slaughtered by the Arakan Army,” the political chief of the RSO, Ko Ko Linn, told AFP.
“Their only policy is the extermination of the Rohingya community,” he stated. “So we are recruiting Rohingyas regularly, giving them military training.”
If somebody had been coerced into joining another group, Ko Ko Linn would not reveal.
However, the Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA), the Arakan Army spokesperson Khaing Thu Kha, charged that three organizations—the RSO, ARSA, and the ARA—were recruiting Rohingya from Bangladesh.
According to him, the conscripts were sent to a Myanmar army base for training before “fighting alongside” the junta’s forces.
It is challenging to evaluate how any cooperation between Rohingya factions and the junta is manifesting itself on the battlefield when mobile and internet networks are down in large portions of Rakhine state.
“Laid right from the start.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity owing to the sensitive nature of the matter, a senior UN staffer and an official from a rights group claimed that armed Rohingya groups had recruited “hundreds” of refugees in Bangladesh.
Numerous men and boys have been recruited by armed groups affiliated with the Rohingya community in Myanmar, operating in tandem with the military.
Although the Rohingya have been in Myanmar for centuries, they are officially seen as foreign invaders from Bangladesh.
The minority has been persecuted for decades by successive regimes there; in 2015, the government decided to stop acknowledging their citizenship.
According to Thomas Kean of the International Crisis Group think tank, children as young as 14 have been forced into combat against their will, as reported by AFP.
However, he continued, it seemed that a tiny number of Rohingya had volunteered to fight after the Myanmar junta had promised them “wages and even citizenship”.
In an effort to strengthen its military forces, the junta in Myanmar triggered a dormant conscription statute in February, following severe battlefield defeats to insurgent factions since last year.
In Buthidaung, a Rohingya man who wished to remain anonymous told AFP that his brother had been “beaten and abducted by ARSA” and sent to work with the military.
He said that the recruits were being trained as a militia to protect Rohingya villages, as initially stated by the junta’s spokesmen.
“But later, they began using them on the battlefields,” he continued. “The junta lied from the beginning.”
