Buthidaung, Arakan State: Burmese Army personnel of battalion No.552, in Sanganet village tract of Buthidaung Township, has been making increased arbitrary detentions, going about torture and extortion among Rohingya civilians in Buthidaung Township, Arakan State, said a businessman.
They are arresting villagers on vague charges. The villagers are brought to their camp and detained for six to seven days and tortured till they get money. They are released later, after paying Kyat 500,000 to 600,000 each.
For a long time now acts of arbitrary detention, torture and other forms of ill-treatment are continuing in the Rohingya community.
The detainees are subjected to severe ill-treatment including deprivation of food, water and sleep and beating with bamboo sticks. Family members have to bring food and other necessary things for the detainees, said a relative of a detainee who was recently released after paying money without any specific accusation.
When a detainee asked Nasaka why he was arrested when he had committed no crime, the Nasaka told him, “We need money.”
The villagers are arrested without any warrant, prevented from reaching out to family members from the detention center, torture in detention center, without access to adequate medical treatment. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) especially target Rohingyas for abuse of their ethnic, racial and religious status, said a local leader on condition of anonymity.
Rohingyas are arrested at random and held by the army or Nasaka (Burma’s border security force) without any ground of any sort, on false accusations or fabricated evidence, until release is secured by bribing. Such detentions are arbitrary in the true meaning of the word and have the effect instilling a sense in the Rohingya community that they may be arrested and detained at any time, Irish Center for Human Rights reported this year.
It is clear that the Rohingyas are specially targeted for arbitrary arrest and detention on the basis of their non-citizenship status, which itself is the result of ethnic, racial and religious discrimination.
The denial of citizenship to the Rohingyas provides the local authorities such as Nasaka, army and police with a readymade strategy for oppression. Their use of torture and human or degrading treatment or punishment is a central component of an overall policy of deliberate persecution.
