Instead of releasing them, the junta transferred 936 Rohingya prisoners who had completed their sentences and included minors from Yangon City’s Insein Prison to Sittwe Town in Arakan (Rakhine) State on 16 February 2025,.
On Saturday 15 February, a day when the courts were shut, over 50 immigration department staff processed the Rohingya detainees according to Political Prisoners Network Myanmar (PPNM).
It said that at about 3:00 am on 16 February military and police personnel removed the 936 Rohingya from Insein Prison. All had been kept illegally imprisoned after completing their sentences, with some having been imprisoned for more than one-and-a-half years after the completion of their sentence. Some had also been moved from other junta prisons in Myanmar to Insein Prison before the transfer.
Of the 936 Rohingya prisoners transferred to Sittwe Town, 548 were men, 267 were women and 67 were children. PPNM speculated that the junta intends to send these Rohingya prisoners to the frontline and use them as human shields.
Ko Thaik Tun Oo, a steering committee member of the PPNM said: “The Rohingya inmates were issued identification cards by immigration officials, although the purpose of these cards remains unclear. Sittwe is a region where fighting between the AA and the junta has been taking place. The sudden transfer of these prisoners, whom the junta has no plans to release, may be intended for use as human shields or to be drafted as conscripts. This is merely my speculation on their possible intentions.”
He added that treating the Rohingya prisoners in this way could cause existing ethnic conflicts to further escalate.
The junta has been conscripting and arming civilians from local communities and even from displaced persons (IDP) camps in the Arakan State townships of Sittwe, Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Kyaukphyu. Some of those have been forced to act as human shields for junta soldiers.
On 14 February 2025, an Argentine court issued international arrest warrants for 23 Myanmar military officers in connection with the Myanmar military's 2017 genocide against the Rohingya people.
Coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and his deputy, Vice Senior General Soe Win, were among the military officers for whom arrest warrants were issued. Additionally, former president U Htin Kyaw and State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been imprisoned by the junta since the coup, were also subject to arrest warrants, according to a statement from the Argentine Court.
