Press Release
February 19, 2024
It is very disturbing that Myanmar military junta is trying to raise Village Defence Forces from every Rohingya village in Northern Arakan and engage them against the Arakan Army.
Recently junta’s civil and military officers met with Rohingya elders and Maulvis in Maungdaw asking them to organize 10 young men from each Rohingya village. The new recruits will be trained and armed by the Myanmar military against the Arakan Army. This is a sinister plan of the genocidaires to further divide the two sister communities of Rohingya and Rakhine on ethnic and religious lines.
Today the whole people of Myanmar are ‘utterly and bitterly disgusted’ with the long military rule and exploitation, giving rise to widespread armed resistance in the country.
Arakan Rohingya National Alliance (ARNA) strongly condemns the ongoing forced conscription of people by Myanmar military across the country. it’s involuntary military service; a particularly heinous form of slavery that often ends in maiming and death.
The United Nations has described Rohingya as the world’s most persecuted people. Bulk of their population has taken shelter in alien lands as baggers and refugees with no hope of future. Today Bangladesh is a home to more than 1.2 million Rohingya. Those who are still in Arakan are living in confined villages, ghettos, apartheid-like concentration camps under subhuman condition. The junta has robbed of everything from them and are destroyed as human being.
The Rohingya people are victims of one of the gravest genocides in 21st century. We cannot and will not forget the mass atrocity crimes, including crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, carried out by the military, its partners and accomplices before or during 2012 to 2017. We will never support the military’s heinous plan but will continue fighting against the genocidaire military until a Federal Democratic Union of Burma is established.
We the Rohingya and Rakhine are historically inseparable. We lived together amicably in the past; we have differences preached by the military and vested interests yet living together; and we have to live until doomsday harmoniously with renewed vigour upholding the principle of “peaceful coexistence” burying all disparities.
Last but not least, now is a crucial time. We urge all people of Arakan to take lesson from the past and work in unison. Remember! Arakan is our own, Burma/Myanmar is for all of us.
Media contact: secretariat@thearna.org
