Myanmar Forcibly Recruits Its Muslims After Denying Them Citizenship

After Myanmar’s military inflicted one of the largest ethnic cleansing campaigns in modern history on the Rohingya Muslims, it is now conducting a forced “recruitment campaign” to use the Rohingya as soldiers in its war against the rebel Arakan Army.

About seven years after Myanmar’s military killed thousands of Rohingya Muslims in what the United Nations described as a “classic example of ethnic cleansing,” the military junta has resorted to forcibly recruiting the Rohingya as its military forces weaken against the opposition coalition, according to a report by the BBC.

Since February, the Myanmar military has forcibly recruited at least 1,500 Rohingya men and boys from villages in Myanmar’s Rakhine State and refugee camps in Bangladesh, according to human rights groups and Rohingya sources, as reported by Voice of America in May.

Among these forcibly recruited individuals are boys, according to Human Rights Watch, which stated that the Myanmar military has been kidnapping men and boys from across Rakhine State since February 2024 as part of a forced recruitment campaign targeting the Rohingya.

How are the Rohingya being forcibly recruited?

Despite the Rohingya having long been denied citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law, the ruling military junta in Myanmar is using the conscription law, which applies only to Myanmar citizens, to forcibly recruit the Rohingya.

The Rohingya are being forcibly recruited through night raids, coercion with false promises of citizenship, and threats of arrest, abduction, and beatings, according to the Voice of America report.

The Myanmar military sends the Rohingya to undergo grueling two-week training sessions before deploying them to combat zones. Many have been sent to the frontlines in the escalating conflict between the military junta and the armed Arakan Army, which flared up in Rakhine State in November 2023, resulting in numerous deaths and injuries.

Two members of a Rohingya camp management committee said that when they tried to resist the recruitment, the military junta authorities restricted movement in the camps and threatened mass arrests and ration cuts. “We had no other choice,” one committee member said.

Shaina Buchner, an Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “It is 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.”

Buchner called on the military junta to immediately end the forced recruitment and allow the unlawfully recruited Rohingya to return to their homes.

Human Rights Watch documented 11 cases of forced recruitment based on interviews with 25 Rohingya from towns in Rakhine State and Bangladesh.

On February 10, the military activated the 2010 People’s Military Service Law, allowing for 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. This announcement came after months of escalating fighting with ethnic armed groups and resistance forces.

The military junta announced that compulsory recruitment would begin in April, with a monthly quota of 5,000 people, but authorities in Rakhine State began forcibly recruiting the Rohingya in early February, according to Human Rights Watch.

Taking children as young as 15

In late February, the military kidnapped more than 150 Rohingya in raids on villages in Buthidaung Township, according to interviewees, Rohingya activists, and media reports.

A 22-year-old Rohingya man said that soldiers from the Light Infantry Battalion kidnapped him along with 30 other young men and boys on February 25, 2024, in Buthidaung Township, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

“The youngest child taken with us was 15 years old,” he said. “There were three conscripts under the age of 18 among us. After we were captured and taken to the military battalion, we saw a list of Rohingya who would be recruited. All young Rohingya in the area were included.”

630,000 Rohingya still live in Myanmar in racial detention camps

The bitter irony is that the authorities in Myanmar still deny the Rohingya citizenship, and they are subject to a host of discriminatory restrictions, such as bans on traveling outside their areas.

In 2012, tens of thousands of Rohingya were expelled from mixed areas in Rakhine State and forced to live in squalid camps. Five years later, in August 2017, 700,000 people fled to neighboring Bangladesh after the military launched brutal clearance operations against them, resulting in thousands of deaths, rapes of women, and burning of villages. Around 600,000 of them still live in Bangladesh.

Myanmar is currently facing a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for “genocide” due to its persecution of the Rohingya.

There are still an estimated 630,000 Rohingya in Rakhine State under apartheid and persecution, including around 150,000 held in open-air detention camps, according to Human Rights Watch.

These appear to be the primary targets of the forced recruitment campaign.

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

On a February evening, a group of junta soldiers in Myanmar arrested Jan Mohammed, who does not use his real name, from Maungdaw Township in Myanmar. When the 24-year-old Rohingya man was taken to a nearby military compound, he knew he had been forcibly recruited by the Myanmar military, according to a Voice of America report.

“They [junta soldiers] didn’t say much. They just said, ‘Come with us,’ and they pointed a gun at me. I felt scared when I saw the gun pointed at me,” Jan Mohammed said.

This was during an interview with the rights group Fortify Rights after he escaped from the junta’s military training camp.

He spoke from Bangladesh, where he said he fled 10 days after starting the forced military training.

“I didn’t want to become a soldier. They are the Myanmar military that persecutes us. … Why should I suddenly support them?” Jan Mohammed said.

Several Rohingya told the BBC that military officers were patrolling the camps and ordering young people to join military training.

Mohammed, a 31-year-old Rohingya man and father of three, told the BBC: “I was scared, but I had to go.”

The Myanmar military is under attack from a rebel coalition called the Three Brothers Alliance.

The forced recruitment of the Rohingya, after previously targeting them, highlights the apparent desperation of the ruling military junta in Myanmar after recently losing vast tracts of land in Rakhine to an ethnic rebel group called the Arakan Army. Dozens of Rohingya have been killed in Rakhine due to military artillery and airstrikes.

The Myanmar military has also suffered significant losses against opposition forces in other parts of the country, with a large number of soldiers killed, wounded, or defecting to the opposition, making it difficult to find replacements. Few are willing to risk their lives supporting an unpopular regime.

The Rohingya fear this is why they are being targeted again and used as cannon fodder in a war the junta appears to be losing.

Mohammed said he was conscripted into the Light Infantry Battalion 270 in Sittwe after the Rohingya were barred from living in the city since their expulsion during the sectarian violence in 2012.

Threat of death if they refuse recruitment

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

Officials also threatened to beat the Rohingya to death if they refused to join or to punish their families if they fled.

Many young Rohingya have tried to escape Rakhine State or hide in the forest to avoid forced recruitment. Radio Free Asia reported that authorities arrested and beat around 40 Rohingya from Kyauk Ta Lone camp when their family members fled.

According to a camp committee member, the Myanmar military now demands new lists of potential conscripts, and after seeing and hearing from the first group of conscripts who returned from the battles, no one else is willing to risk being conscripted.

Camp leaders are now trying to persuade poor men and those unemployed to leave by offering to support their families during their absence and collecting donations from other camp residents.

Matthew Smith from the human rights organization Fortify Rights said: “This recruitment campaign is illegal and akin to forced labor.”

He added: “This is a brutal and harmful exploitation of what is happening. The military is recruiting the victims of the Rohingya genocide in an attempt to stave off a nationwide democratic revolution. This regime has no regard for human life. It is now prioritizing these violations. It is a long history of atrocities and impunity.”