Myanmar’s Rohingya ethnic minority, victims of a brutal campaign of mass slaughter and persecution by the nation’s military in 2016, is again being subjected to a wave of deadly ethnic cleansing, according to survivors and human rights groups.
This time, though, the perpetrators are said to be the Arakan Army, one of several ethnic groups fighting the nation’s ruling junta, as well as by their former military persecutors.
“Ethnic Rohingya and Rakhine civilians are bearing the brunt of the atrocities that the Myanmar military and opposition Arakan Army are committing,” Elaine Pearson, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a report this week that accused both the AA and junta forces of “extrajudicial killings and widespread arson against Rohingya” and other civilians.
“Both sides are using hate speech, attacks on civilians, and massive arson to drive people from their homes and villages, raising the specter of ethnic cleansing,” she said.
In one of the most recent incidents, disputed by the Arakan Army, scores of Muslim Rohingya, including many young children, were reported to have been killed in an AA drone and artillery strike while attempting to flee Myanmar on August 5, according to Rohingya rights activists who have spoken to some of the survivors.
Aiming to escape violence in Rakhine state’s Maungdaw township, the Rohingya families were on the bank of the Naf River waiting for a chance to cross over to Bangladesh when they were targeted by the Arakan Army, according to the activists.
On the same day, a boat carrying some Rohingya across the river to Bangladesh reportedly faced an AA drone attack. Two other overloaded boats carrying scores of fleeing Rohingya are said to have capsized, leaving most of the passengers to drown.
Altogether more than 200 Rohingya died as a consequence of the AA attacks, according to witness accounts related to VOA by Rohingya rights activists.
Social media images, apparently shot soon after the incident, showed bodies of men, women and children strewn along the bank of the river that marks the border between the two countries.
VOA has not independently verified the images but Bangladeshi government officials said August 8 that they had found at least 34 bodies floating in the Naf River near its Shahpori Island. They were believed to be some of those who had died in the alleged AA attack three days earlier.
The United League of Arakan/Arakan Army denied the incident in an August 7 statement.
In its English translation of the statement, the Arakan group expressed regret that “many Muslims” fleeing Maungdaw had “reportedly died from artillery or small arms fire, bombings, drownings, airstrikes, or massive explosions near the coast of Maungdaw, causing great distress.”
“We respectfully announce that these deaths did not occur in areas under our control and are not related to our organization,” the statement said, adding, “We are investigating the details of these incidents and will promptly release information as soon as we have verified the facts.”
Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, told VOA Thursday that the AA has been violently targeting Rohingya villages since April, torching thousands of homes and making hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
“In June, the AA began violently targeting Rohingya in Maungdaw township. Over the past weeks, they dropped drone bombs and fired artilleries on the Rohingya villages. When the attacks began increasing, Rohingya decided to flee to Bangladesh. Now, the AA is targeting the Rohingyas who are fleeing for life, too” said Lwin, who said he had spoken to many witnesses from Maungdaw.
“In Maungdaw, the AA killed at least 400 Rohingya, including children and women, in the past weeks. On the afternoon of August 5, the AA dropped dozens of bombs on the bank of Naf and a boat, massacring over 200 Rohingya,” Lwin said.
For more than 50 years, minority Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring countries, including Bangladesh, to escape persecution and discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Myanmar has been engulfed in a bloody civil war that has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians since 2021, when the country's military seized power through a coup. In recent months, a coalition of ethnic rebel forces, including the AA, has escalated their offensive to oust the junta, which has been ejected from vast areas in Shan, Chin and Rakhine states.
While launching their offensive against the junta forces, the AA leadership expressed a commitment to respect Rohingya human rights, activist Lwin said.
“The Rohingya community then believed that, unlike the Myanmar military, the AA would not attack them. But in recent months, while taking control of vast areas of Rakhine, the rebel group began violently targeting the Rohingya,” Lwin said.
“In Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships, where most Rohingya are concentrated, the AA rebels burnt villages, looted houses and carried out massacres. In April – May, the rebels killed around 2,100 Rohingya in Buthidaung. In a horrific massacre, on May 2, the AA killed 600 Rohingya, including women and children, in Htan Shauk Khan village of Buthidaung.”
According to the Free Rohingya Coalition, over 250,000 Rohingya have been made homeless in Buthidaung and Maungdaw since April.
Fortify Rights, an international human rights group based in Southeast Asia, says it has documented killings and arson by the AA in Rohingya villages in Rakhine.
“In Buthidaung and Maungdaw, Rohingya are left to survive in fields and rural areas without adequate shelter, food, health care, and hygiene facilities, after their homes were destroyed by junta attacks and razed by the AA,” said Ejaz Min Khant, a human rights associate at Fortify Rights.
Khant told VOA on Thursday that humanitarian NGOs and U.N. agencies are barely functioning in Rakhine, leaving the Rohingya in a desperate situation. Many have fled to Bangladesh seeking safety, he said.
“The Arakan Army has positioned itself near Rohingya villages, drawing junta attacks, and has been involved in indiscriminate attacks on civilians, forced labor, forced recruitment, and movement restrictions against Rohingya.”
Fortify Rights Director John Quinley said his group has seen an increase in human rights violations against the Rohingya since November.
“Although the AA has taken control of large parts of Rakhine state from the Myanmar junta, they are acting like a perpetrator of violence, not a revolutionary armed group trying to uphold human rights and democracy,” he told VOA.
Noor Hossain, a Rohingya teacher in the sprawling refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, said that the AA is trying to “erase the Rohingya’s long-standing identity, land, and homes, to subjugate the community as slaves.”
“Rakhine has become a graveyard for Rohingyas. The AA is targeting us violently the way the Myanmar military has done for many years. It will be extremely difficult for us to live there in the future, as there is no guarantee of safety for any Rohingya under the control of Rakhine people or the AA,” Hossain told VOA.
“Unless the international community intervenes and reins in the AA immediately, no Rohingya will be able to live in Myanmar in the near future.”
Ingyin Naing of VOA Burmese contributed reporting to this story from Bangkok.
