Rohingya recruits must fight alongside the Myanmar army

A Rohingya refugee works on decorating a wedding hall at a refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh. | Photo credit: AFP

Rohingya refugee Syed fled Myanmar for a second time last month after being forced to fight alongside the military that drove his family from their home years earlier.

Syed, whose name has been changed to protect him from reprisals, is one of thousands of young men from the persecuted Muslim minority rounded up to fight a war of their own making. Their conscription into the ranks of Myanmar's junta-led military has sparked revenge attacks on civilians and driven thousands more into Bangladesh, which already has around a million Rohingya refugees.

“The people there are suffering a lot. I saw it with my own eyes,” said Syed shortly after his escape and return to the squalid refugee camp in Bangladesh that he has called home for seven years.

Syed said he was recruited in June by an armed Rohingya group operating in the camps and sent to fight against the Arakan Army (AA), a rebel group waging war against Myanmar's junta to seize their own autonomous homeland. He and other Rohingya recruits were used as porters, digging trenches and fetching water for Myanmar troops entrenched against advancing rebel forces.

“They didn't train us,” he said. Sent on patrol in a Muslim village, he managed to escape his captors and return to Bangladesh. He is one of about 14,000 Rohingya who have crossed the border in recent months as fighting near the border escalated, according to figures provided to the Bangladeshi government by the UN refugee agency.

Army concessions

At least 2,000 Rohingya have been forcibly recruited from refugee camps in Bangladesh this year, experts say. Many more Rohingya living in Myanmar have also been conscripted. Those forced to serve in Bangladesh say they were coerced by armed groups, apparently in return for concessions from the Myanmar junta that could allow them to return home.

Mohammad Johar, 22, said his brother-in-law was killed in a drone strike he blamed on the AA as the two fled the border town of Maungdaw earlier this month. “The Myanmar military cannot keep up with the AA … both are bombing each other, but it is the Muslims who are dying,” he said. Both the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, the two armed groups operating in the camps, have refused to recruit refugees.