In western Myanmar, the junta is fighting against a powerful rebel group. Once again, the Rohingya are the ones who suffer.
Salah Uddin is a Rohingya and lives underground in Myanmar. The 24-year-old human rights activist’s real name is different. To protect him, we are using a pseudonym.
He comes from the city of Buthidaung in western Myanmar. Salah Uddin was lucky. When the fighting started, he had already left the city.
City in flames
When the Rohingya refused to leave, the Arakan Army set fire to the city, says Salah Uddin, adding that the fighters did not even wait for the deadline they had set themselves.
Many people would still have been in their homes. It is unclear how many people died.
The “Arakan Army” is one of several armed groups fighting against the military junta ruling Myanmar. It wants to establish its own independent state in the western state of Rakhine.
“Arakan Army” denies allegations
In May, the Arakan Army gained control of the town of Buthidaung, where many Rohingya had previously found refuge from the war. Rohingya activists accuse the Arakan Army of forcibly driving the Rohingya out of the town.
Legend:
Rohingya in the Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh: Due to repression and persecution, at least one million Rohingya live as refugees in Bangladesh and other Asian countries.
Keystone / SHAFIQUR RAHMAN
When asked by Radio SRF, the spokesman for the “Arakan Army”, Khine Thu Kha, denied responsibility. It is not true at all that they set fire to houses and drove people away. Instead, the spokesman blames the soldiers of the military junta.
The situation is complicated and independent verification is difficult: satellite images show, however, that entire districts of the city were burned down.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recently confirmed that the Rohingya are increasingly caught between the fronts in the conflict.
Salah Uddin says he supports the revolution, the fight against the dictatorship of the military junta. But that is not a license for the rebels to do whatever they want. He has not had any contact with his family, who live in Buthidaung, for weeks.
Forced into military service
The situation of the Rohingya was already precarious before the civil war. They are not recognized as an ethnic group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, and many Rohingya are stateless.
Cynically, this does not stop the ruling military junta from forcing Rohingya to do military service. “They come to the villages armed and force the residents to provide young men for military service,” explains Salah Uddin. If they do not comply, they are arrested or even killed.
After a week of training, the new recruits would be sent directly to the front, as human shields, so to speak.
This creates additional tensions between the ethnic groups. But the “Arakan Army” must understand, says Salah Uddin, that these Rohingya have no choice but to fight for the junta.