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 legislation.
Ataullah, an ethnic Rohingya and the commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Military, or ARSA, was arrested on Monday, the Bangladeshi police mentioned in a press release. He was captured in Narayanganj District, on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, based on a neighborhood police officer. 9 different suspected members of ARSA had been additionally nabbed in raids.
The ten suspected insurgents had been charged beneath an antiterrorism legislation at a court docket in Narayanganj and at the moment are in police custody, Shahinur Alam, the officer in cost on the Siddhirganj Police Station in Narayanganj, mentioned on Wednesday.
Coordinated assaults by ARSA insurgents on safety outposts in 2016 and 2017 had been used as a pretext for the Myanmar navy to launch a scorched-earth marketing campaign of arson, mass rape and killing in opposition to the Rohingya minority. Dozens of Rohingya villages had been wiped from the map in what the Myanmar navy known as “safety operations.” The US has labeled the expulsion of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh, which propelled the quickest outflow of refugees in current historical past, a genocide.
In the present day, greater than one million Rohingya are confined to a sequence of tent settlements in neighboring Bangladesh, certainly one of which is the most important refugee camp on this planet. Gun battles within the camps between rival militant teams, together with ARSA, have added but one other layer of trauma to Rohingya life and radicalized a technology 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, based on 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 obtained spiritual instruction. The group was largely unknown till 1000’s of its fighters besieged the Myanmar safety outposts, killing about 20 police and navy personnel within the 2017 assaults, based on the Myanmar authorities. Wearing black, ARSA insurgents had been educated to rally themselves with the battle cry “Converse loudly, Allah is the best,” based on 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 previous, arguing that solely an armed insurrection may counter the a long time of persecution confronted by the Muslim minority in a Buddhist-majority nation.
However lately, ARSA has develop 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 in opposition to civilians is simple,” mentioned 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 instantly 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, might represent warfare crimes.
There’s little hope that the Rohingya can return to Myanmar anytime quickly. Even earlier than the Myanmar navy staged a coup 4 years in the past, plunging the Southeast Asian nation into civil warfare, the Rohingya bore the brunt of the navy’s ethnic chauvinism. Waves of Rohingya fled house, discovering refuge and menial jobs in Asia and the Center East. There at the moment are much more Rohingya residing exterior of Myanmar than of their homeland.
Cuts in American assist in current weeks have added extra ache 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 a long time in Rakhine State, their house in western Myanmar. Some Rohingya armed organizations have known as for autonomy, others merely a halt to the apartheidlike situations inflicted on the minority by the Myanmar navy, which is dominated by the Buddhist Bamar ethnic group. The pogroms in opposition to the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017 had been abetted by yet 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 known as the Arakan Military has wrested management of a lot of Rakhine State from the Myanmar navy, 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 facet of the Myanmar navy. Many Rohingya imagine the Arakan Military commits far worse atrocities in opposition to them than does the Myanmar navy.
The Myanmar navy’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 navy and civilian governments in Myanmar have dismissed the Rohingya as overseas interlopers from Bangladesh and refuse to even use the identify “Rohingya,” lest it legitimize the ethnic minority’s existence. Most Rohingya have been primarily stripped of their citizenship, regardless of their leaders’ having as soon as served in Parliament and in different august positions.
Saif Hasnat contributed reporting from Dhaka, Bangladesh.