An ethnic armed group in western Myanmar claims to have captured hundreds of Myanmar military soldiers after taking control of a major command post close to the border with Bangladesh.

In a video statement posted to the Telegram messaging app yesterday, the Arakan Army (AA) said that soldiers belonging to the headquarters of the 15th Military Operations Command (MOC-15) in Rakhine State’s Buthidaung Township had surrendered to its forces.

The video released by the AA shows several hundred captives, some of them in military uniforms, others injured, walking in a line across a field and down a muddy road. Most are barefoot. Later, the video shows what appear to be AA soldiers, armed with rifles, guarding a large group of men in an open field.

An English-language caption in the video says it shows the deputy commander of the MOC-15, his soldiers, and their families after a “final assault in which [junta] soldiers faced total defeat and surrendered.”

In a separate statement on Sunday, the AA said that the headquarters of the MOC-15, one of the military’s three MOCs in Rakhine State, was captured on May 2 after a 12-day siege. The group captured “weapons, ammunition, military equipment, and surrendered prisoners of war,” the statement added, according to The Associated Press.

As the AP and some other media reports have noted, the AA’s video appears to show members of the Muslim Rohingya minority. The Rohingya have been subject to severe repression for years, most particularly in 2017, when the military, in conjunction with Rakhine vigilantes, launched a “clearance operation” that drove around 740,000 people across the border into Bangladesh.

Myanmar’s military has reportedly begun drafting Rohingya men into its ranks under its recently activated conscription law, which stands to poison further the ethnic and sectarian tensions in western Myanmar.

While the fall of the MOC-15 headquarters has not yet been confirmed by the military regime in Naypyidaw, its surrender would mark the latest in a long series of military setbacks for the military administration that seized power in a coup in 2021.

The losses have been particularly dramatic in Rakhine, where the AA has been on the offensive across Rakhine State since a year-long ceasefire collapsed last November. By March, according to an analysis from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the AA had won “primary control” of eight of Rakhine State’s 17 townships, and one township in neighboring Chin State.

In early February, it overran the junta’s final remaining outpost in Mrauk-U, the capital of the last independent Rakhine kingdom, which was conquered by the Burmese kings in 1785. The victory was highly symbolic for the AA and its political wing, the United League of Arakan (ULA), which envisions the reestablishment of an independent Rakhine state. A few days later, it overran the 9th MOC headquarters in Kyauktaw Township, leaving just one of Rakhine’s three MOCs – the 5th MOC HQ in Toungup Township in the south of the state – under junta control.

In recent weeks, the AA and the junta have fought fiercely for control over Maungdaw and Buthidaung, the two northernmost townships of Rakhine State close to the Bangladesh border, prompting hundreds of Myanmar soldiers and border police to flee across the border into Bangladesh. The AA also reportedly seized a border guard headquarters in northern Maungdaw Township late last week, according to The Irrawaddy.

The two sides are also vying for control of Ann Township, in the central part of Rakhine, the base of the Myanmar military’s Western Regional Military Command. The AA launched attacks there on March 24.

If confirmed, the fall of the MOC-15 HQ would mark a significant loosening of the junta’s hold on Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships, which the AA has now cut off from the rest of Rakhine State. Should these townships fall under the AA’s control, it would then be able to redeploy its forces against the state capital, Sittwe, which is still under junta administration, or Ann Township, which sits at the crossroad of the highway linking central Rakhine State to Magwe Region to the east.

The loss would also have considerable political importance. The regime has lost just two other MOC headquarters: the 16th MOC HQ in Hsenwi, northern Shan State, which was captured by the Three Brotherhood Alliance in January, and the 9th MOC HQ, which the AA captured in February. The Myanmar army has 21 MOCs, which are made up of mobile infantry battalions and “essentially act as rapid response units,” according to Andrew Selth of Griffith University, an expert on the Myanmar military.

Two years after the the Cotton Campaign called for the global boycott of Uzbek cotton to be lifted, following monitoring by groups like the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights that found “no systemic or systematic, government-imposed forced labor during the cotton harvest,” monitors continue to face difficulties in Uzbekistan. 

On May 2, the Cotton Campaign urged the Uzbek government to take action to protect those engaged in independent monitoring and reporting on labor rights following the harassment of a well-known activist and a journalist in mid-April.

Umida Niyazova, the executive director of the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, and Sharifa Madrakhimova, a journalist and human rights activist, were reportedly ambushed by two men on April 18 outside Madrakhimova’s home in the Fergana region. The women were planning to tour the region to speak to farmers and companies engaged in Uzbekistan’s lucrative cotton industry.

As the Cotton Campaign reported:

The two men intimidated and insulted Niyazova and Madrakhimova and accused Niyazova of “organizing information attacks against Uzbekistan”. Niyazova and Madrakhimova got in their car to avoid further interaction and one of the men gripped the door to prevent them from closing it and driving away. Niyazova and Madrakhimova had been traveling throughout the region to meet with farmers and representatives of cotton companies. Fearing for their own safety and that of the farmers and local human rights activists they were planning to meet, Niyazova cut her trip short. 

According to the Cotton Campaign, one of the men was later identified as Shukhrat Esanov, a blogger with a YouTube following of 280,000. On  April 28, he released a video further attacking Niyazova. The campaign said that Esanov knew the two women’s itinerary, “suggesting that Niyazova and Madrakhimova had been under surveillance, and raising questions about how he had access to information regarding their whereabouts and plans.”

This incident follows several others that human rights activists have highlighted as deeply troubling as they further underscore a backsliding on human rights in Uzbekistan. 

In two incidents earlier in April, Cotton Campaign said, “Police summoned and interrogated for several hours a member of the Ezgulik human rights organization and a farmer, both based in Kasbi district of Kashkadarya. Police accused both of engaging in actions that are ‘harmful to Uzbekistan.’”

And in January, an independent monitor working on the Indorama Agro project – an effort to modernize cotton production in Uzbekistan financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – was told by government security officials that their work was “dangerous.”

The emerging theme centers on a devious accusation that human rights activists and independent monitors are deliberately hurting Uzbekistan with their activities. In exposing labor rights violations and, ultimately, the failure of the state to live up to its international commitments, these individuals are directly challenging the rosy narrative Tashkent would prefer. 

Paradoxically, it was these exact monitors who paved the way for the lifting of the cotton boycott.

 Allison Gill, legal director at Global Labor Justice, which hosts the Cotton Campaign, said, “Uzbek Forum’s independent monitors played a critical role in driving an end to systemic state-imposed forced labor of children and adults in the Uzbek cotton sector… And their work is vital to further Uzbekistan’s progress towards meeting international standards in its cotton and textile industry.”

The work of independent monitors , conducted under great pressure especially during the reign of Islam Karimov, identified abusive labor practices and guided the Uzbek government in addressing these issue. But their independence is key; it’s what the international community trusts and relies on. It’s also what rankles the Uzbek government. 

In the Cotton Campaign’s press release regarding the harassment of Niyazova and Madrakhimova, Nate Herman, senior vice president of policy of the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), explained, “To comply with rapidly emerging transnational supply chain human rights legislation, global brands need credible independent monitoring and reporting on labor rights at every level of their supply chains… Freedoms of speech, movement, and association are fundamental to a sustainable cotton and textile industry, and we urge the Uzbek government to ensure that independent monitors are allowed to investigate and report on labor rights without fear of reprisal.”