By Joshua Carroll
October 11, 2014
Dozens of men from Myanmar’s
persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority have been arrested and tortured because of
alleged ties to a militant Islamic organization, according to a rights group.
The Arakan Project, a
Thailand-based group that documents abuses against the Rohingya, says one man
has been tortured to death in Myanmar’s far north-west, near the border with
Bangladesh.
Authorities have rounded up at
least 58 men in the last two weeks from several villages in the north of
Rakhine state, according to figures compiled by the Arakan Project and seen by
the Anadolu Agency.
The wife of the dead man told the
group she was forced to sign a statement that her husband died of natural
causes.
Last month, al-Qaeda leader Ayman
Al-Zawahiri announced plans to expand his terror network to include Myanmar.
The recently arrested Rohingya
men were accused of having ties to a group called the Rohingya Solidarity
Organization, or RSO.
Despite little being known about
the organization’s movements today, sporadic attacks on Myanmar’s border with
Bangladesh are often blamed on the RSO. In recent years the organization has
also been accused of forging ties to al-Qaeda.
Chris Lewa, the Arakan Project’s
founder, told the AA Friday the arrests were “arbitrary” and “clearly a
reaction to the al-Qaeda announcement earlier in September.”
She added that the men were
picked up at checkpoints or from their villages by members of the Border Guard
Police, an organization that Rohingya regularly accuse of human rights abuses.
The RSO is believed to have been
formed in the 1990s after the Myanmar army forced hundreds of thousands of
Rohingya accused of being in the country illegally to flee to Bangladesh.
Its members are understood to
have broken away from the more moderate Rohingya Patriotic Front and earned
support from extremist religious groups in other countries, including Malaysia
and Afghanistan.
Earlier this year Khin Maung
Myint , head of foreign relations for the pro-Rohingya National Democratic
Party for Development, claimed "the RSO hadn’t existed for 20 years.”
He said stories about RSO
movements in the region had led to conspiracy theories and questioned whether
the existence of the group was a government smokescreen.
Last year, photos circulated on
extremist Buddhist websites purporting to show armed insurgents inside Myanmar
preparing to avenge attacks against Rohingya.
The Rohingya have been persecuted
in Myanmar for decades but their plight has gained widespread international
attention since the former military-ruled country began democratic reforms in
2011.
While hundreds of political
prisoners have been freed, censorship has been relaxed and economic reforms
brought in, the Rohingyas' suffering has intensified.
In 2012, extremist mobs of
Buddhists attacked Rohingya villages in Rakhine's state capital Sittwe. The
initial riots killed up to 140 and forced tens of thousands of Rohingyas into
squalid camps.
The violence has since spread
amidst a wave of hate speech targeting all of Myanmar’s Muslims, led by
extremist monks bolstered by the country’s newfound freedoms of expression.
Presidential spokesman Ye Htut
has described accusations of Rohingya persecution as "baseless."
Source : World Bulletin
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