Across Buthidaung and Maungdaw, the drug-mafia terrorist Arakan Army (AA) has launched a coordinated forced-labor campaign against Rohingya villages. In Buthidaung’s Thayet Pyin, Sin Ei Pyin, Kyauk Phru Taung, Let Weh and surrounding areas, AA fighters now issue rotational labor rosters demanding road clearing, bunker construction, trench digging, portering ammunition, and carrying frontline supplies. Families unable to comply face fines of 20,000–50,000 MMK, livestock seizure, beatings, or detention, enforced through a tight network of checkpoints at every village entrance and exit.

In Buthidaung alone, over 1,000 Rohingya are being forcibly conscripted. Another 78 people including women and children were held for three months and forced into continuous work without pay. In Fun New Lake village, children under 13 are taken daily and forced to labor inside a Buddhist templecleaning, sweeping courtyards, cutting grass, and carrying loads without food, water, or compensation. Each Rohingya neighborhood is ordered to send their children, pulling students out of regular schools and religious “Arabic schools,” and exposing them to exhaustion and daily psychological pressure.

AA commanders reject all appeals to reduce quotas. Their message is clear:

Work for us or leave your village.
Serve the militia or disappear.

In northern Maungdaw, one local commander demanded 50 Rohingya workers every day from each village, even during rice harvest season, bluntly telling families that “work must continue regardless of hardship” and that those who refuse “must leave the country.”

This is not governance; it is a narco-militia using forced labor to dominate Rohingya communities, clear land for supply routes, storage sites, and military logistics, and drive out unwanted populations. Under Arakan Army rule, Rohingya also face home closures after malicious complaints, property takeovers, confiscation of valuables, displacement of entire families, and strict movement bans between villages.

For Rohingya communities already facing movement restrictions, food shortages, and surveillance, this new AA policy deepens an already unbearable life. Forced labor is now another weapon used to break resistance, weaken families, erase childhoods, and push Rohingya out of their ancestral land.

The world must stop mistaking this narco-militia for a “governing authority.”
Its rule is not civil administration it is coercion, exploitation, and ethnic engineering.