Warning: Graphic content
The suspected murder of a 27-year-old Muslim at a military training camp in Yangon suggests the religious minority is targeted for Myanmar junta conscription, according to activists.
Ko Ko Latt, also known as Amanullah, was a father of two from Mee Laung Sakhan village in Taikkyi Township, Yangon Region. He was drafted on March 28 to a battalion headquarters in Mingaladon Township and died on Sunday.
Major General Zaw Min Tun, the junta’s spokesman, told the BBC that Ko Ko Latt was unhealthy before his conscription.
His family has allegedly been told not to speak out. Muslim activists claim he was deliberately killed.
Troops and village administrators seized him as the only villagers selected by the conscription lottery.
“Up until Sunday morning he was calling villagers, asking for food without pork. Every meal the military gave him contained pork,” said a source close to the family.
On Sunday at noon the family was called by the military and informed that Amanullah was at Mingaladon military hospital and later to say he was dead.
No further details were given.
His funeral was held on Sunday evening in the village cemetery.
The friend said: “His face was injured and there was blood around his mouth like he had been beaten.”
The junta activated the Conscription Law on February 10 amid military defeats across the country.
It has temporarily exempted women but began summoning enlisted men to training schools and army camps in Yangon, Naypyitaw, Mandalay and Magwe regions and elsewhere in late March.
A Muslim activist who has adopted the name Ko Nyan Hein has contacted Amanullah’s family.
“Amanullah’s case reveals how the junta considers Muslims,” he said.
He said a healthy man in his 20s should not die after four days of military training.
Amanullah leaves a wife, a four-year-old and three-month-old. Other Muslims have died at the junta’s hands since conscription was announced.
Following the resumption of hostilities in Rakhine State on 13 November last year, the junta is facing defeat by the Arakan Army (AA).
The AA has seized 10 Rakhine towns and fighting continues in the northern townships of Buthidaung and Maungdaw and Ann Township, where the junta’s Western Command is based.
Around 1,000 Rohingya men, around half of them displaced, have been forcibly recruited in recent weeks, the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK stated on Wednesday.
Tun Khin of the organization told the media that at least 97 Rohingya conscripts had been killed in fighting with the AA.
The NGO said the regime has stripped the Rohingya of citizenship rights, meaning there is no legal basis for conscription.
The AA said it found Rohingya men in military uniforms after a battle for a battalion headquarters in Rathedaung Township.
The junta abducted an estimated 125 Kaman Muslims as conscripts from a displacement camp in Kyaukphyu Township, Rakhine State, on February 28, according to the Burma Human Rights Network and residents.
Kaman Muslims were recognized in 1982 as one of the country’s ethnic minorities.
Muslim scholars are not exempt, unlike members of Christian and Buddhist orders.
The Jamiat Ulama El-Islam has asked the junta to exempt young Muslim scholars from military service without success, according to sources in Yangon.
A man from a Yangon mosque said: “Conscripts in their early 20s are the same ages as Buddhist monks who are also learning religious teachings. They will become Islamic teachers. But the junta denied the request.”
