The chief of an armed group representing a persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar was arrested in a raid in neighboring Bangladesh this week and charged beneath an antiterrorism regulation.
Ataullah, an ethnic Rohingya and the commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, was arrested on Monday, the Bangladeshi police stated in a press release. He was captured in Narayanganj District, on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, in accordance with an area police officer. 9 different suspected members of ARSA have been additionally nabbed in raids.
The ten suspected insurgents have been charged beneath an antiterrorism regulation at a courtroom in Narayanganj and are actually in police custody, Shahinur Alam, the officer in cost on the Siddhirganj Police Station in Narayanganj, stated on Wednesday.
Coordinated assaults by ARSA insurgents on safety outposts in 2016 and 2017 have been used as a pretext for the Myanmar army to launch a scorched-earth campaign of arson, mass rape and killing towards the Rohingya minority. Dozens of Rohingya villages have been wiped from the map in what the Myanmar army referred to as “safety operations.” America has labeled the expulsion of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh, which propelled the quickest outflow of refugees in latest historical past, a genocide.
In the present day, greater than one million Rohingya are confined to a collection of tent settlements in neighboring Bangladesh, one in every of which is the most important refugee camp on the earth. Gun battles within the camps between rival militant teams, together with ARSA, have added but another layer of trauma to Rohingya life and radicalized a era of determined youth.
ARSA and different rebel teams have assassinated camp leaders, together with these working towards a return of Rohingya to Myanmar. Militants have forcibly recruited boys and younger males into their ranks. They’ve additionally directed smuggling rings that deposit younger Rohingya within the intercourse and servant trades, in accordance with camp elders and human rights teams.
Mr. Ataullah, the ARSA commander, was born to an exiled Rohingya household in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, the place he acquired non secular instruction. The group was largely unknown till 1000’s of its fighters besieged the Myanmar safety outposts, killing about 20 police and army personnel within the 2017 assaults, in accordance with the Myanmar authorities. Wearing black, ARSA insurgents have been skilled to rally themselves with the battle cry “Converse loudly, Allah is the best,” in accordance with the group’s members.
Mr. Ataullah, who was recognized by the Bangladeshi police as Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi, secretly recruited amongst Rohingya in Myanmar, each younger and outdated, arguing that solely an armed rebel might counter the many years of persecution confronted by the Muslim minority in a Buddhist-majority nation.
However in recent times, ARSA has change into higher identified for gangland-style turf battles within the refugee camps in Bangladesh, preventing with different armed teams, together with the Rohingya Solidarity Group. Rebel leaders, human rights watchdogs say, have indulged in drug and human trafficking.
“Ataullah’s position in orchestrating egregious violations towards civilians is simple,” stated John Quinley, director of Fortify Rights, a human rights group that on Tuesday launched a 78-page report on Rohingya militant exercise in Bangladesh. “He straight oversaw horrific acts of violence, together with killings, abductions and the torture of Rohingya civilians in each Myanmar and Bangladesh.”
The actions of Mr. Ataullah and different insurgents, Mr. Quinley added, could represent warfare crimes.
There may be little hope that the Rohingya can return to Myanmar anytime quickly. Even earlier than the Myanmar army staged a coup 4 years in the past, plunging the Southeast Asian nation into civil warfare, the Rohingya bore the brunt of the army’s ethnic chauvinism. Waves of Rohingya fled dwelling, discovering refuge and menial jobs in Asia and the Center East. There are actually much more Rohingya dwelling exterior of Myanmar than of their homeland.
Cuts in American support in latest weeks have added more pain to Rohingya life within the Bangladesh camps, as clinics and different important companies have ceased.
Militant teams that declare to be preventing on behalf of the Rohingya have shaped over the many years in Rakhine State, their dwelling in western Myanmar. Some Rohingya armed organizations have referred to as for autonomy, others merely a halt to the apartheidlike situations inflicted on the minority by the Myanmar army, which is dominated by the Buddhist Bamar ethnic group. The pogroms towards the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017 have been abetted by one more ethnic minority, the Buddhist Rakhine, who populate the identical strip of western Myanmar because the Rohingya.
In the present day, an ethnic Rakhine insurgency referred to as the Arakan Military has wrested management of a lot of Rakhine State from the Myanmar army, together with the northern a part of the state the place the Rohingya are clustered. The modified battlefield has led to an uncommon alliance. Some Rohingya militant teams have kidnapped boys and younger males from the refugee camps in Bangladesh and dispatched them to Myanmar to battle on the aspect of the Myanmar army. Many Rohingya imagine the Arakan Military commits far worse atrocities towards them than does the Myanmar army.
The Myanmar army’s ethnic cleaning campaigns have focused a number of minority teams of a number of faiths. However the violence directed towards the Rohingya has been essentially the most excessive. Each army and civilian governments in Myanmar have dismissed the Rohingya as international interlopers from Bangladesh and refuse to even use the identify “Rohingya,” lest it legitimize the ethnic minority’s existence. Most Rohingya have been basically stripped of their citizenship, regardless of their leaders having as soon as served in Parliament and in different august positions.
Saif Hasnatcontributed reporting from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
