Two unverified videos purporting to show a group of armed Rohingya men calling for fighters to join them in Rakhine state are circulating online following deadly clashes on the border with Bangladesh.
One 1:20 minute film, which has gone viral on social media, appears to show a few dozen young men touting military-grade assault rifles and handguns, asking for Muslim volunteers.
“The fighting can start now, today,” a man says in the Rohingya language, an Arakanese language spoken on both sides of the border.
It’s not clear where the footage originated, but the clip is stamped with the Arabic phrase ‘harakat al-yaqeen’ which, loosely translated, means ‘Movement of Faith’ or ‘Movement of Certainty’.
The other, also unverified, 2:50 minute video shows a bigger group of men chanting and hoisting weapons in the air.
Unidentified attackers have launched a series of deadly attacks against police in northern Rakhine in recent days. Dozens of people are believed to have been killed.
Four soldiers were slain yesterday after hundreds of men armed with pistols and swords attacked troops in Maungdaw township, according to state media.
The vast majority of residents are Rohingya Muslims, members of an oppressed minority confined to miserable camps and villages across Rakine state, denied citizenship by both Bangladesh and Myanmar.
There is not believed to have been a sustained Muslim militancy in the area since the Rohingya Solidary Organization – now believed by most experts to be essentially defunct – was active in the 1980s and 1990s
Activists fear the attacks – which began with a series of coordinated assaults on border posts that killed nine soldiers in the early hours of Sunday – have prompted a violent crackdown on Rohingya civilians.
“The army has a responsibility to protect civilians regardless of religion or ethnicity,” said Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Fortify Rights, in a statement. “The authorities can diffuse this situation by upholding law and order while also protecting the rights of Rohingya.”
A Rohingya man named only as ‘Ishamael M’ told Fortify Rights he had seen a soldier shoot and kill an unarmed local man aged around 50 in Myo Thu Gyi village on Monday morning.
“I was watching from the window,” he said. “The military man was talking on the phone. After that, he shot him. I saw them shoot him in the bottom of the face and the head.”
