The Rohingya community in northern Maungdaw is losing sleep worrying about nightly arrests by state authorities after many refused to participate in a household survey that makes them denounce their ethnicity. The survey requires that they refer to themselves as Bengali, implying that they are from Bangladesh and not Arakan state.
Many people have already fled their villages since Nasaka personnel started enforcing the racial profiling survey. They are hiding in the forest or in their neighbor’s homes. But now Nasaka has started nightly patrols targeting those that refused to participate. They are entering the villages arresting whoever they see and raiding the homes of those who managed to evade them, according to a student. “Nasaka arrest all of the women when they can’t find the male villagers.”
Nasaka tried to rape 5 women that were arrested from Oo Shaikya village recently, said the student.
Ten villagers from Kyikanpyin that were returning from Maungdaw were arrested, but were released after paying bribes of 10,000 Kyat an apiece, according to one of the victims that didn’t want her name used.
In Shwezar, 6 Nasaka officers also recently arrested one family to extort money from them.
Mohamed Noor, 25; son of Abdul Sukur, were arrested after returned to his home in Oo Shaikya recently, an elder from his village recently told the Kaladanpress.
On top of the instability that the racial profiling survey has caused many Rohingyas' freedom of movement is being restricted to their villages at night. This is making it nearly impossible to work in their paddy fields. One elder called it a “master plan” from state authorities to deny their right to “food” and “education” to order to “drive out the Rohingya community from their homeland”.
