Myanmar: The military junta recruits Rohingya into the armed forces in violation of conscription law and also enlists children as soldiers

ROMA – The military junta uses a conscription law, which applies only to Myanmar citizens, to recruit Rohingya men, even though they have long been denied citizenship under a law dating back to 1982, he writes Human Rights Watch (HRW). The Rohingya said they were captured at night, forced to enlist with false promises of citizenship, under threat of arrest and beatings. The army trained them for two weeks and then deployed them in various areas of Myanmar. Many were sent to fight on the front lines in Rakhine state. Many have already been killed and injured. HRW documented 11 cases of forced recruitment particularly in the cities of Sittwe, Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Pauktaw and Kyauktaw in Rakhine State and Bangladesh.

The abuses of the military junta. On February 10, the army invoked a Military Service Law enacted in 2010, which provides for compulsory conscription for men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 for a period of maximum of five years in the event of a state of emergency, such as the one currently experienced by Myanmar. The February decision was taken following the intensification of clashes between the military and the resistance. The junta had also announced that recruitment would begin in April, but authorities in Rakhine state began forcibly calling the Rohingya as early as early February.

The persecution of the Rohingya. There are 630 thousand Rohingya living in Rakhine State under an apartheid regime, writes HRW. 150 thousand are detained in open-air camps. Since the military coup of February 2021, the junta has imposed severe restrictions on movements and humanitarian aid offered to this population considered among the most discriminated against in the world. The authorities drew up a list of Rohingya men considered suitable for military service, then further limited movement in the camps and threatened mass arrests and cuts to food rations for those who refused to join. They promised full citizenship, $2.30 a day and two bags of rice instead to anyone who participated in the program. At the end of February 300 men were recruited from the Sittwe camp alone and then received 24 dollars but no citizenship cards. Many young Rohingya have attempted to flee Rakhine State or have hidden in the jungle to avoid forced recruitment but the authorities – documents Radio Free Asia – they took revenge on their family members, who were picked up and beaten.

The training. A 22-year-old described the two-week military training as a period of constant harassment, with men forced to dig bunkers and chop wood, with limited food and water and under the constant threat of punishment. “We became weak within a few days,” the witness told HRW. “Some recruits lost consciousness. Three of us bled from our mouths and noses for days. They humiliated us with words, they offended our mothers and our sisters. Those 12 days passed like 12 years.” After training, 100 Rohingya from Sittwe camps were sent to fight on the front lines in Rathedaung, Rakhine state. Five were killed and 10 were seriously injured. The military promised the families compensation of 476 dollars and two bags of rice. The bodies were not returned.

The witness. “They tricked my son into joining the army,” said the mother of one of the victims. “They called him under the pretense of doing electrical work, then forced him to attend training. He died in the war. They didn’t even let me see the body, I couldn’t touch it one last time. When he was taken away his wife and I followed him. They held him in a barracks for a few hours, we were able to talk to him from outside the fence. Then he left in a car, and he was crying.”

The right. Unauthorized conscription is a form of arbitrary detention that violates international human rights law. The abuses suffered by conscripts amount to forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment on which, on 18 March, the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, also expressed his opinion, reiterating the need for greater international attention on the political and humanitarian crisis that lives in Myanmar.