Myanmar junta forcefully recruits over 1,000 Rohingya men, boys: HRW

The Myanmar military has abducted and forcibly recruited more than 1,000 Rohingya men and boys from across Rakhine State since February 2024, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.

The junta is using a conscription law that only applies to Myanmar citizens, although the Rohingya have long been denied citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law.

"Rohingya described being picked up in nighttime raids, coerced with false promises of citizenship, and threatened with arrest, abduction, and beatings," said the New York-based global rights watchdog in a statement.

The military has been sending Rohingyas for two weeks of abusive training before deploying them, with many ending up on the front lines against the Arakan Army. Several Rohingyas have been killed or injured in the ongoing conflict since November 2023.

"It's appalling to see Myanmar's military, which has committed atrocities against the Rohingya for decades while denying them citizenship, now forcing them to fight on its behalf," said Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

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Human Rights Watch documented 11 cases of forced recruitment, drawing on interviews with 25 Rohingya from Sittwe, Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Pauktaw, and Kyauktaw townships in Rakhine State and Bangladesh.

The military activated the 2010 People's Military Service Law on February 10, allowing the conscription of men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 for up to five years during the current state of emergency.

The junta announced that conscription would start in April, with a monthly quota of 5,000, but the authorities in Rakhine State began forcibly recruiting Rohingya in early February, adds HRW.

In late February, the military abducted over 150 Rohingya in raids on villages in Buthidaung township, according to people interviewed.

A 22-year-old Rohingya man said that light infantry battalion soldiers abducted him and 30 other young men and boys at gunpoint at about 11 pm on February 25 in Buthidaung town.

"The youngest boy taken away with us was 15 years old," he said. "There were three recruits under 18 among us. After we were apprehended and taken to the military battalion, we saw the list of Rohingya who were going to be recruited. All the Rohingya youths in the region were included."

Further raids took place in Maungdaw township in March. A 24-year-old Rohingya man who was abducted with about two dozen others from Ka Nyin Tan village said the officers told them, "Protecting Maungdaw is upon you."

An estimated 630,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine State under a system of apartheid and persecution, including about 150,000 held in open-air detention camps, according to HRW.

Since the February 2021 military coup, the junta has imposed severe movement restrictions and aid blockages on the Rohingya, increasing their vulnerability to forced recruitment.

Rohingya camp management committee members said that junta authorities have been tallying "eligible" Rohingya or compelling the committees to make lists.

Two members said when they tried to refuse, junta authorities further restricted movement in the camps and threatened mass arrests and ration cuts.

"We had no other option," one committee member said.

At meetings in camps in Sittwe and Kyaukpyu, junta officials promised to issue all forced recruits pink citizenship cards, reserved for "full" citizens.

"In the meetings, officers picked up their citizenship cards and told people, 'We will give you this type of ID card if you join the military service,'" a camp management committee member in Thet Kae Pyin camp said.

"People believed them." Authorities also promised 4,800 kyat (US$2.30) a day and two sacks of rice.

About 300 Rohingya from the Sittwe camps were sent to two weeks of military training in late February. Upon completion, the military gave the forced recruits 50,000 kyats ($24) but no citizenship cards.

"When the junta broke their promise to issue citizenship cards to the first 300 Rohingya recruits, people stopped believing them and started avoiding the recruitment campaigns," a camp management committee member said.

Rohingya in the Sittwe camps said that for the second round of forced recruitment, a few hundred Rohingya were taken at gunpoint in raids.

Officials have also threatened to beat Rohingya to death if they refuse to join or to punish their families if they flee.

Many young Rohingya men have tried to escape Rakhine State or gone into hiding in the jungle to escape forced recruitment. The authorities rounded up and beat about 40 Rohingya from Kyauk Ta Lone camp when their family members ran away, the HRW statement added citing Radio Free Asia.