According to reports, the junta government is providing food and cash to economically distressed families in Sittwe Township, Rakhine State, in order to induce them to send their grown offspring into the military.
For every young man who wishes to join the military, the regime authorities are providing a 20-kilo bag of rice and five hundred thousand kyats to one family.
Army officers in Sittwe reportedly instructed the appropriate ward administrations in the second week of August to send interested young men to military training, according to a Sittwe resident.
"The financially distressed locals are now starving. In response to their hunger, the military authorities organized them by promising rice and money. According to the military's instructions, ward officials are instructed to provide rice and money if every grown-up kid from a family joins the military,” he stated.
The Myanmar military is targeting the general populace of the Mingan Ward in Sittwe, IDPs in refugee camps, and monastery residents.
They are also using incentives to coerce displaced people from villages that have been forcibly evicted into Sittwe City to enlist.
They are also propagating misinformation that they will be relocated to areas in Sittwe Township that are in need of it after they finish their military training with the junta army.
Reliable sources claim that the Myanmar military has really dispatched a number of conscripts to the front lines of the conflict with the Arakan Army.
According to a local in Sittwe, those who engage in criminal activity in Sittwe are also at risk of being jailed if they refuse to join the militia.
"If these thieves or buglers are caught, they are asked whether they would prefer to go to jail or join the military. They are being convinced to volunteer in this way by the promise that if they join the military, they will be able to provide for their families,” he said.
According to him, the majority of the population in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, is unemployed and struggling financially. The regime took advantage of this by organizing the poor.
He stated that because the present capital, Sittwe, has a lack of employment and no income, it is leading to hunger and suicides.
On August 4, U Aye Than Maung, 48, who lived in the Ywargyi Mrauk Ward in Sittwe, and Daw Saw Than Aye, an elderly IDP who had sought shelter in a monastery in the same ward, killed themselves by hanging themselves after famine.
The parents of a family in Mingan Ward's Block (11) in Sittwe City poisoned their three children with rice on June 29 because they could no longer endure the agony of starvation. The parents later took their own lives by hanging themselves.
Due to the militant army's blockade of people's movement outside of Sittwe City, they are stuck there, experiencing job shortages and exorbitant prices.
Locals also claim that the militant army is attempting to persuade the villagers to join the military by supplying them with food and money during this famine.
The Arakan Army (AA) may soon launch an attack on Sittwe City, according to several reports. At the moment, the junta army is sending a large number of soldiers to Sittwe, and there are also several naval ships stationed in the waters off Sittwe.
