The ethnic Rohingya Muslims have no relations with the Rohingya militant group known as ARSA said several people who fled into Bangladesh from Myanmar on Sunday.
Myanmar security forces and vigilante mobs are burning down entire Rohingya villages and shooting people at random, as they try to flee.
Mohammad Ismail a Rohingya Muslim, who fled Myanmar on Sunday, told the Daily Observer that Myanmar army and Buddhist monks are burning down entire Rohingya villages and shooting people at random as they try to flee. They are killing thousands of innocent ethnic Rohingya Muslims each day.
He demanded international pressure to send them back to their motherland.
A violent crackdown by Myanmar's military on insurgents from the Muslim Rohingya population has sparked a mass exodus of more than 420,000 people into Bangladesh. At least 1,300 people have died in what the UN human rights chief has called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing."
ARSA stands for the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, and is also known by the name Harakat al-Yaqeen, or "Faith Movement." A December 2016 report by the International Crisis Group said the group is led by a "committee of Rohingya émigrés in Saudi Arabia and is commanded on the ground by Rohingyas with international training and experience in modern guerrilla war tactics." In interviews with CNN the militants deny this. While they represent the Rohingya Muslims, the group has told CNN that it is secular and is not connected with Islamist groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda.
The government had no prior information about the Rohingya exodus into Bangladesh following the recent crackdown by the Myanmar army in Rakhine State. Due to lack of prior information, the authorities said, they could not prepare to deal with the evolving situation.
Aung San Suu Kyi, tells a lie that Rohingya Muslims have connection with ARSA, Ismail said. Myanmar security forces have told of soldiers slaughtering civilians and burning down entire villages.
UN leaders have described the campaign as having all the hallmarks of "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingyas, a stateless group that has endured years of persecution and repression. The status of the Muslim minority has long been an explosive topic in Myanmar.
Many in the Buddhist majority view the group as foreign interlopers from Bangladesh and deny the existence of a Rohingya ethnicity, insisting they be called "Bengalees".
The army still plays a powerful role in politics, with control over key ministries like borders and defence, plus a quarter of parliament.
"Please save us and tell the international community that we are of Rohingya ethnicity, we speak Bangla but we are not Bangladeshis. We are Rohingya Muslims and Myanmar citizen. We want to go back to our motherland," said Mohammad Ismail.
"Arakan has huge natural gas, they want to build an economic zone," he said. He also demanded to send UN peacekeepers in Arakan State.
