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| Southeast Asia |
| ‘We are not terrorists’ -- an exclusive interview with an ARSA commander |
| 2017-09-25 |
| [Dhaka Tribune] The man sat slumped in a chair inside the thatched hut, the shadows lengthening over his face in the gathering dusk. Tall and gaunt, he was in his mid-twenties but sounded younger. Wearing a traditional blue-and-white check lungi and a cotton shirt, he did not really look like a rebel. His youthful voice hardened, however, as he reeled off the names of the villages which had been burnt down by the Myanmar army in his home state of Rakhine since August 25, when his organization attacked border posts and an army base, an operation in which he took part with "200 men from our area." "We hit their soldiers, they hit our women and kiddies," he said. "The Burmese military are cowards." An intermediary introduced him as Abdus Shakoor, a commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army or ARSA in the Maungdaw district in northern Rakhine. We met him near a barbed wire fence separating Bangladesh and Myanmar after a long trek through swaying rice fields and rolling hills, a deceptively pristine setting for a desperate tale of loss, recklessness and forlorn hope. After a succession of guides took turns to lead us through a maze of dirt tracks, we came upon a cluster of huts. Children played in a clearing nearby. Chickens scrabbled in the dirt. There were no guns in sight. It was oddly appropriate for the insurgency that Shakoor was describing ‐ almost entirely rural, a peasant war fought in the Rakhine countryside. The meeting with the ARSA commander was set up after a week of enquiries, dead-ends, and several false starts. ARSA fighters are under severe pressure from the Myanmar army, which has reacted to the August 25 attacks with a scorched-earth campaign that the UN and international human rights ...not to be confused with individual rights,mind you... groups have denounced as ethnic cleansing. Yangon has denied that the security forces have targeted civilians, claiming that the army is trying to hunt down terrorists. It is an accusation to which Shakoor is extremely sensitive. "We are not terrorists," he said, using the English word, which he pronounced as ’tetarist.’ "We stood up for our haqq, our rights. There’s nothing else that we want, nothing!" The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a group previously known as Harakah al-Yaqin, or "Faith Movement," attacked border guard posts, cop shoppes, and army bases on August 25, killing at least 10 coppers and an army soldier. Shakoor described why and how his group planned and carried out the attack. "Our zimmadars or elders said we must fight back because the Myanmar government was starving us, killing us slowly. They slaughter our people for no reason, they dishonour our women. They want to uproot us from the land that was handed down from our forefathers. "To save our people, to save our mothers and sisters, to take back our rights, we took up sticks, and axes and knives and rose up against the oppressors." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 To be candid, I'm envious of the Burmese. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2017-09-25 01:50 |