International courts are still investigating the killing of the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority by Myanmar’s military in 2017, which the United States has called a genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh and those who stayed faced persecution by the junta. Now a new threat looms for the group, this time at the hands of a powerful rebel force.
That force, the Arakan Army, has gained control of much of Myanmar’s Rakhine state in recent months, most recently the northern section where many Rohingya still live. In recent days, human rights groups have accused the rebels of driving the minority from their homes and destroying their property, often through arson. The Arakan Army has rejected these accusations.
Sectarian tensions underscore Myanmar’s complex ethnic makeup and rivalries. In Rakhine state, an impoverished strip of land in the country’s west formerly known as Arakan, many ethnic Rakhine Buddhists have long tried to break away from Myanmar and its Bamar majority. They have also often ignored the plight of another group living alongside them who were falsely dismissed as Bangladeshi interlopers and troublemakers: the Rohingya.
Formed about 15 years ago, the Arakan Army claims to have 40,000 people and has fought the Myanmar military for years. It has grown to become one of the most powerful of the various allied ethnic rebel armies out of a joint desire to overthrow the junta, which staged a coup in 2021 and now faces the greatest challenge to its rule from rebel forces. and pro-democratic. .
Reports that the Arakan army mistreats the Rohingya have raised fears of new atrocities, even as the junta appears increasingly weak.
“Arakan Army soldiers told us to move to a safer place as there is heavy fighting in our city and there was a risk to us. Before we could decide whether to move or not, the house caught fire,” said Aung Htay, 42, a Rohingya resident of Buthidaung, one of the largest towns that was largely destroyed by the fire. In a telephone interview, he said he did not know what caused the fires in the city, which broke out after dark.
In interviews, nine other nearby residents said that in recent weeks houses have been burned and residents forced to leave. It was unclear who was responsible for the violence, but there were signs of Arakan Army involvement.
“We have interviewed numerous witnesses who claimed that AA troops were holding the town of Buthidaung on the night of May 17, when widespread arson attacks occurred,” said Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, referring to the AA army. Arakan by his initials.
The United Nations also said fires were burning after the Myanmar military withdrew from the sites and that tens of thousands of Rakhine and Rohingya across the state had been displaced by the conflict. Some have gone to neighboring Bangladesh, where approximately a million Rohingya had already fled in previous years fearing for their lives, settling there in refugee camps.
But Bangladesh does not allow Rohingya refugees to work and move freely, and conditions in the camps have become increasingly dire.
During a visit to one of those camps on Friday, Asaduzzaman Khan, Bangladesh’s home minister, told local media that no more people from Myanmar would be allowed into his country.
The Arakan Army has also previously been accused by human rights groups of abuses against the Rakhine Buddhist population it claims to represent. A representative of the group rejected the accusations of irregularities.
“We are not into burning houses,” Khaing Thu Kha, a spokesman for the group, said in a phone call, blaming the fires instead on Myanmar’s junta. Military officials could not be reached for comment.
He also denied accusations that the rebel force displaced civilians. “The Arakan Army has never forced anyone to move. But we could have advised people to leave because the war zone was not safe.”
Some of the Arakan Army’s social media posts are less cordial in tone. Although the Rohingya are called “friends” and “fellow citizens,” Twan Mrat Naing, the commander of the Arakan Army, also refers to the Muslim minority as “Bengalis,” a term widely considered an insult, implying that the Rohingya are infiltrators. of Bangladesh without rights in Myanmar.
In a more incendiary statement about X, he accused Rohingya activists of wanting to establish a “separate Islamic safe zone,” a claim the activists rejected in a statement.
The allegations against the Arakan Army come against the backdrop of reports that Rohingya have been recruited into the Myanmar army and have joined troops in attacking Rakhine villages. Human Rights Watch believes that more than a thousand Rohingya men have been forcibly recruited since February.
Alarmed by renewed sectarian tensions, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned of an “acute risk of new atrocities.”
In a joint statement, Rohingya activists urged Arakan Army leaders not to fall into the military trap of playing divide and conquer by trying to pit the two communities against each other. “Only the military regime will benefit from this,” groups including the European Rohingya Council and the Burmese Rohingya Organization of the United Kingdom said in the statement.
Sectarian tensions have a long history in Rakhine state. In World War II, the Rakhine sided with the Japanese and the Rohingya with the British. The Rohingya were persecuted by the military junta that seized power in 1962 and eventually declared them stateless. Hundreds of people from the Rakhine and Rohingya communities died in clashes in 2012. In 2016 and 2017, when more than 700,000 Rohingya were expelled to Bangladesh, members of the Rakhine ethnic group were accused of having helped kill their neighbors. Muslims, an operation that has since been formally labeled a genocide by the US State Department.
“The Myanmar military continues to try to create ethnic and religious problems. When they lose, they tend to create such conflicts, so we have to be careful,” said U Aung Thaung Shwe, a former member of Rakhine Parliament representing Buthidaung. He said his house was also burned down and he doesn’t know who is responsible.
Now the Rohingya are forced to choose sides in a conflict in which neither side defends their rights. They are also under pressure from their own armed groups, accused of forcibly recruiting Rohingya youth in Bangladesh refugee camps.
“The dynamics on the ground may be complex, but one thing is simple: the Rohingya are being used again,” said Thinzar Shunlei Yi, a prominent Myanmar human rights activist.