Introduction
From Historical Coexistence to a Renewed Campaign of Persecution
The present persecution of the Rohingya in Arakan cannot be understood solely through the events of 2024, 2025 or 2026. It forms part of a much longer history of political exclusion, communal violence, dispossession and repeated attempts to remove the Rohingya from the land they regard as their ancestral homeland.
Arakan was an independent kingdom before its conquest by the Burmese Konbaung dynasty in 1784–1785. The kingdom of Mrauk-U possessed its own political institutions, court, commercial networks and distinctive society. Historical accounts indicate that, amid internal political conflict, a faction of Arakanese elites sought intervention from the Burmese king Bodawpaya. Rather than merely settling an internal dispute, Burmese forces invaded the kingdom, captured Mrauk-U and brought Arakan's independence to an end. The conquest was followed by extensive killing, destruction, deportation and the removal of religious and cultural treasures.
Despite this traumatic history, Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists continued for long periods to live side by side in Arakan, sharing towns, markets, agricultural areas, waterways and local economic life. Their relationship was not one of uninterrupted hostility. Nevertheless, exclusionary Rakhine nationalist and religious currents repeatedly portrayed the Rohingya as outsiders and encouraged Burmese political authorities to view them as a demographic or security threat.
The catastrophe of 1942
The underlying hostility erupted with devastating consequences during the Second World War. Following the collapse of British authority and the Japanese advance into Burma in 1942, Arakan descended into widespread communal violence. Rohingya historical accounts describe extremist Rakhine forces, together with Japanese and Burmese nationalist elements, attacking Muslim villages, killing civilians with firearms and traditional weapons, burning settlements and driving large numbers of Rohingya northwards or across the border into Bengal.
Within Rohingya collective memory, as many as 140,000 people are described as having been killed or displaced during this catastrophe. Rohingya elders have passed down an even more haunting memory: that the waters of the Kaladan River appeared red with blood for more than two months. Whether or not that description can now be independently verified, it remains deeply embedded in Rohingya collective memory as a symbol of the extraordinary scale and horror of the violence.
The events of 1942 left a profound wound between the two communities. They also established a dangerous political precedent: the idea that demographic removal could be used to establish territorial dominance. This mentality would reappear repeatedly in subsequent decades.
Independence and a period of Rohingya participation
After Burma became independent in 1948, the Rohingya experienced a period in which many of the basic rights later taken from them were still available. Rohingya participated in national political life, had parliamentary representatives and served in public institutions. Rohingya could work as teachers, police officers and in other branches of government service.
There was also broadcasting in the Rohingya language, providing public recognition that stands in stark contrast to later attempts to deny even the existence of Rohingya identity.
An especially important development was the establishment of the Mayu Frontier Administration in 1961, covering Maungdaw, Buthidaung and part of Rathedaung and administered directly from Rangoon. The uploaded RCN analysis places this period within the wider history of the progressive removal of Rohingya political and administrative recognition. The Mayu Frontier Administration existed until 1964.
For Rohingya, this period demonstrated something extremely important: they were not always treated by the Burmese state as foreigners without a place in the country's political system. They participated in the political, administrative and social life of post-independence Burma.
The 1962 coup and systematic removal of rights
The military coup led by General Ne Win in 1962 marked a fundamental turning point.
The political and administrative space available to the Rohingya was progressively dismantled. The Mayu Frontier Administration disappeared, and over subsequent decades Rohingya were gradually stripped of political recognition, freedom of movement, documentation and other fundamental rights.
At the same time, extremist Rakhine political currents continued promoting narratives in Rangoon that portrayed Rohingya as foreigners rather than an indigenous community of Arakan. In RCN's assessment, the convergence between these exclusionary narratives and the power of the Burmese military state proved disastrous: extremist ideology supplied arguments for exclusion, while the central state possessed the administrative and coercive machinery to implement it. This relationship is also examined in the RCN strategic analysis.
1978: Operation King Dragon
The persecution escalated dramatically in 1978 with the military's Operation Nagamin, or Operation King Dragon.
More than 200,000 Rohingya fled into Bangladesh amid widespread fear, arrests and abuses. Large numbers of Rohingya were detained, displaced or forced across the border.
The refugee crisis became a major dispute between Burma and Bangladesh. Eventually, Burma agreed to the return of the refugees, demonstrating an important contradiction that Rohingya have long emphasized: people who would later be systematically portrayed as foreigners were nevertheless accepted back by Burma following the 1978 exodus.
1982: Statelessness institutionalized
The next decisive blow came with the 1982 Citizenship Law.
The law established a highly restrictive citizenship structure and, through its discriminatory implementation, became the central legal mechanism through which Rohingya citizenship, documentation, movement, education, property rights and political participation were progressively denied.
Research cited in the RCN analysis identifies Rakhine historian Dr Aye Kyaw, who was associated with General Ne Win, as one of the significant intellectual contributors or drafters involved with the 1982 law. It would be inaccurate to describe one individual as its sole author because the legislation was enacted through Ne Win's military-socialist state and its institutions. Nevertheless, his involvement illustrates how Rakhine ethnonationalist ideas concerning Rohingya identity could enter national policy and subsequently be enforced by the Burmese state.
The consequences were devastating. A people who had participated in parliamentary politics and public life after independence were progressively rendered de facto stateless in their own homeland.
Decades of persecution
What followed was not a single episode but a continuing system of persecution.
Successive Burmese governments and military authorities subjected the Rohingya to repeated security operations, restrictions on movement, arbitrary arrest, forced labour, confiscation of property, restrictions on marriage and family life, and severe limitations on education and employment.
At the local level, Rohingya also experienced violence and abuse from extremist elements within the Rakhine population. Rohingya community accounts include cases of men being beaten to death and women subjected to sexual violence. In the view of the Rohingya community, perpetrators frequently acted with an expectation of impunity.
The result was that Rohingya increasingly lived as a subordinated and controlled population in their own ancestral homeland.
2016–2017: culmination of decades of persecution
The process reached catastrophic proportions in 2016 and especially in 2017.
Myanmar military and security forces conducted so-called clearance operations against Rohingya communities. Villages were burned, civilians were killed, women and girls were subjected to sexual violence, property was destroyed and enormous numbers of Rohingya were driven across the border into Bangladesh.
United Nations investigators subsequently documented widespread and systematic killing, rape, torture, village burning and forced displacement and concluded that there were grounds to infer genocidal intent. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled during the 2017 operations alone, joining hundreds of thousands who had been displaced during previous decades.
The principal perpetrators were the Myanmar military and security forces. However, local Rakhine vigilantes and extremist elements also participated in or facilitated some attacks.
From the Rohingya perspective, this participation reflected a longstanding extremist objective: removing Rohingya from Arakan and establishing overwhelming demographic control of the territory.
From cooperation against the military to AA domination
The subsequent history contains a profound irony.
After most Rohingya had been expelled from Arakan, the Arakan Army intensified its own armed struggle against the Myanmar military. It presented itself as a movement seeking liberation and self-determination for Arakan and gradually became one of the most powerful armed organisations in Myanmar.
During its struggle against the military, the AA sought political sympathy, assistance and cooperation from different actors. Many Rohingya hoped that the struggle against military dictatorship might ultimately create an opportunity for a new relationship between Rohingya and Rakhine.
Some Rohingya therefore hoped that when the AA gained control of Arakan, the two communities could finally live peacefully side by side and that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh would be able to return safely to their homeland.
That hope has increasingly been replaced by fear.
As the AA expanded its territorial control, reports began emerging of serious abuses against Rohingya civilians. Human Rights Watch has documented severe restrictions on movement, pillage and mistreatment under AA control.
More seriously, Human Rights Watch's May 2026 investigation into the 2 May 2024 Hoyyar Siri massacre concluded that AA fighters may have killed at least 170 Rohingya men, women and children, with the actual number of dead and missing potentially much higher. Witnesses described AA fighters opening fire on civilians attempting to flee, including people reportedly carrying white flags. Human Rights Watch corroborated testimony using satellite imagery and verified photographs and videos. The AA denies responsibility.
The RCN strategic analysis consequently warns that the Rohingya now face not merely isolated abuses but a potentially interconnected system of territorial exclusion, coercive control, economic exploitation, political delegitimization and regional isolation.
A painful repetition of history
For Rohingya, the present situation therefore carries a disturbing historical familiarity.
When the AA was weaker and fighting a much stronger Myanmar military, many Rohingya hoped that a shared experience of oppression might eventually create a more inclusive Arakan. Instead, as the AA has gained military strength, territorial control and new regional relationships, those hopes have been increasingly betrayed.
RCN's assessment is that the methods may have changed, and the armed authority may have changed, but the underlying danger remains: Rohingya are once again being pressured to disappear from Arakan.
The issue is not the Rakhine population as a whole. Collective blame would itself reproduce the dangerous ethnic logic that has caused so much suffering in Arakan. There are Rakhine people who reject persecution and believe in coexistence. The concern addressed in this documentation is specifically the conduct of the Arakan Army/United League of Arakan, extremist political networks, and individuals or structures participating in or enabling abuses against Rohingya civilians. This distinction is also explicit in RCN's strategic analysis.
The allegations now documented including killings, massacres, beheadings, arbitrary detention, forced recruitment and forced labour, restrictions on movement, destruction and seizure of property, looting of livestock and livelihoods, and the displacement of civilians cannot be dismissed simply because the AA is fighting the Myanmar military. Opposition to a brutal military regime does not provide immunity for abuses committed against another civilian population.
This AA’s Brutality archive has therefore been established to document what has happened to the Rohingya as the AA has expanded and consolidated its control over Arakan. The chronology for 2024, 2025 and 2026 records incidents, survivor accounts, investigations and other available evidence. Where allegations have not been independently established, they should be identified as allegations.
The purpose is not to promote hatred between Rohingya and Rakhine. It is precisely the opposite. A peaceful future for Arakan cannot be built by removing one community so that another can claim exclusive ownership of their shared homeland.
Rohingya and Rakhine have lived in Arakan for generations. They must ultimately live there together again. But genuine coexistence cannot be founded on forced displacement, denial of identity, fear or impunity.