ARSA sets up camps at Myanmar-Bangladesh border, imparts arms training to cadres

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) has set up bases at the Myanmar-Bangladesh border and is imparting armed training to their cadre to launch massive attacks on Myanmar security forces. 

ARSA is a Rohingya insurgent group active in Myanmar. As per the intelligence report, some camps are situated very close to Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Earlier, the Myanmar government also alleged that ARSA has three training camps inside Bangladesh and many Rohingyas are joining them.

In January, six Myanmar Border guards were injured after 10 armed ARSA attackers ambushed a border guard post near Wet Kyein village in Maungdaw township in the north of the Rakhine state.

Bangladesh authorities had denied that Rohingya terror camps are operating inside their territory. “On the Bangladesh side the Arakan Army has two bases and ARSA has three bases. Therefore, Myanmar army has lodged a complaint with the Bangladesh military attaché over the issue,” said Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmar’s President’s Office, during a press conference in January.

On August 25, 2018, ARSA had issued a statement expressing grave concerns at the sufferings of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and urged all Rohingyas to unite under the common goal of defending the community from the genocidal army and terrorist government in Myanmar. ARSA also mentioned that its legitimate right to protect Rohingyas from persecution, ensuring their return to 'our ancestral land with safety and dignity'
and urged refugees to refrain from indulging and trading in drugs, human trafficking and violence. 

As per some report, ARSA is recruiting people from refugees camps in Bangladesh. They are brainwashing and radicalising the Rohingya Muslims and giving them weapons to fight against the Myanmar Army.

Amnesty International in his report blamed ARSA for killing 99 Hindus in Rakhine state.

"A Rohingya armed group brandishing guns and swords is responsible for at least one, and potentially a second, massacre of up to 99 Hindu women, men, and children as well as additional unlawful killings and abductions of Hindu villagers in August 2017. Based on dozens of interviews conducted there and across the border in Bangladesh, as well as photographic evidence analysed by forensic pathologists, the organisation revealed how ARSA fighters sowed fear among Hindus and other ethnic communities with these brutal attacks," Amnesty International revealed.