Armed Rohingya Group's Leader Is Arrested in Bangladesh

New York Times

19-03-2025

The leader of an armed group representing a persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar was arrested in a raid in neighboring Bangladesh this week and charged under an antiterrorism law.
Ataullah, an ethnic Rohingya and the commander of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, was arrested on Monday, the Bangladeshi police said in a statement. He was captured in Narayanganj District, on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, according to a local police officer. Nine other suspected members of ARSA were also nabbed in raids.
The 10 suspected insurgents were charged under an antiterrorism law at a court in Narayanganj and are now in police custody, Shahinur Alam, the officer in charge at the Siddhirganj Police Station in Narayanganj, said on Wednesday.
Coordinated attacks by ARSA insurgents on security outposts in 2016 and 2017 were used as a pretext for the Myanmar military to launch a scorched-earth campaign of arson, mass rape and killing against the Rohingya minority. Dozens of Rohingya villages were wiped from the map in what the Myanmar military called 'security operations.' The United States has labeled the expulsion of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh, which propelled the fastest outflow of refugees in recent history, a genocide.
Today, more than a million Rohingya are confined to a series of tent settlements in neighboring Bangladesh, one of which is the largest refugee camp in the world. Gun battles in the camps between rival militant groups, including ARSA, have added yet another layer of trauma to Rohingya life and radicalized a generation of desperate youth.
ARSA and other insurgent groups have assassinated camp leaders, including those working toward a return of Rohingya to Myanmar. Militants have forcibly recruited boys and young men into their ranks. They have also directed smuggling rings that deposit young Rohingya in the sex and servant trades, according to camp elders and human rights groups.
Mr. Ataullah, the ARSA commander, was born to an exiled Rohingya family in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, where he received religious instruction. The group was largely unknown until thousands of its fighters besieged the Myanmar security outposts, killing about 20 police and military personnel in the 2017 attacks, according to the Myanmar government. Dressed in black, ARSA insurgents were trained to rally themselves with the battle cry 'Speak loudly, Allah is the greatest,' according to the group's members.
Mr. Ataullah, who was identified by the Bangladeshi police as Ataullah abu Ammar Jununi, secretly recruited among Rohingya in Myanmar, both young and old, arguing that only an armed rebellion could counter the decades of persecution faced by the Muslim minority in a Buddhist-majority country.
But in recent years, ARSA has become better known for gangland-style turf battles in the refugee camps in Bangladesh, fighting with other armed groups, including the Rohingya Solidarity Organization. Insurgent leaders, human rights watchdogs say, have indulged in drug and human trafficking.
'Ataullah's role in orchestrating egregious violations against civilians is undeniable,' said John Quinley, director of Fortify Rights, a human rights group that on Tuesday released a 78-page report on Rohingya militant activity in Bangladesh. 'He directly oversaw horrific acts of violence, including killings, abductions and the torture of Rohingya civilians in both Myanmar and Bangladesh.'
The actions of Mr. Ataullah and other insurgents, Mr. Quinley added, may constitute war crimes.
There is little hope that the Rohingya can return to Myanmar anytime soon. Even before the Myanmar military staged a coup four years ago, plunging the Southeast Asian country into civil war, the Rohingya bore the brunt of the military's ethnic chauvinism. Waves of Rohingya fled home, finding refuge and menial jobs in Asia and the Middle East. There are now far more Rohingya living outside of Myanmar than in their homeland.
Cuts in American aid in recent weeks have added more pain to Rohingya life in the Bangladesh camps, as clinics and other essential services have ceased.
Militant groups that claim to be fighting on behalf of the Rohingya have formed over the decades in Rakhine State, their home in western Myanmar. Some Rohingya armed organizations have called for autonomy, others merely a halt to the apartheidlike conditions inflicted on the minority by the Myanmar military, which is dominated by the Buddhist Bamar ethnic group. The pogroms against the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017 were abetted by yet another ethnic minority, the Buddhist Rakhine, who populate the same strip of western Myanmar as the Rohingya.
Today, an ethnic Rakhine insurgency called the Arakan Army has wrested control of much of Rakhine State from the Myanmar military, including the northern part of the state where the Rohingya are clustered. The changed battlefield has led to an unusual alliance. Some Rohingya militant groups have kidnapped boys and young men from the refugee camps in Bangladesh and dispatched them to Myanmar to fight on the side of the Myanmar military. Many Rohingya believe the Arakan Army commits far worse atrocities against them than does the Myanmar military.
The Myanmar military's ethnic cleansing campaigns have targeted multiple minority groups of multiple faiths. But the violence directed toward the Rohingya has been the most extreme. Both military and civilian governments in Myanmar have dismissed the Rohingya as foreign interlopers from Bangladesh and refuse to even use the name 'Rohingya,' lest it legitimize the ethnic minority's existence. Most Rohingya have been essentially stripped of their citizenship, despite their leaders having once served in Parliament and in other august positions.