Written by 
Credible reports indicate that the Arakan Army committed crimes against the Rohingya in Buthidaung in May – but the group has managed to silence many of its critics among the resistance and civil society organisations.
By FRONTIER
Ko Maung Maung hid in his uncle’s house, watching from the window as Buthidaung town went up in flames.
“The Rohingya who hadn’t hidden yet were rounded up by the Arakan Army and arrested,” the 24-year-old said. “I knew they were AA because of their uniforms and I heard them speaking to each other in the Rakhine language.”
Maung Maung, who asked to go by a pseudonym, lived in a nearby village, but on the night of May 17 he had been visiting the town in northern Rakhine State to attend to his dried fish shop. He and 20 relatives took shelter at his uncle’s house, which was built from large concrete slabs.
“I witnessed AA soldiers pouring gasoline on houses and burning them. Some of the Rohingya who were hiding with us thought they should flee because they heard gunshots and the area was filling with smoke, but my uncle told them it was safer to hide. Luckily, the house we were hiding in didn’t catch fire,” he told Frontier.
The burning occurred under disputed circumstances, as the AA battles the Myanmar military for control of Rakhine. The AA says it fights for the autonomy of all people in the state, but is largely made up of ethnic Rakhine, which have long had a contentious relationship with their Rohingya neighbours.
As the AA moved into the state’s two northernmost townships, Rohingya-majority Maungdaw and Buthidaung, it faced fierce opposition from Rohingya armed groups, including the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, Rohingya Solidarity Organisation and Arakan Rohingya Army. Some of these groups allegedly attacked Rakhine and Hindu communities in Buthidaung town, leading the AA to respond in kind, allegedly torching thousands of Rohingya homes and killing civilians.
Maung Maung and other Rohingya sources who were in the town at the time told Frontier that AA fighters came on the morning of May 18, and told them they had clashed with the military overnight, leading to the town’s destruction. But all of the sources said the military had retreated on May 15 and none reported seeing such clashes.
Further raising suspicion, Maung Maung said he took photographs of the devastation that morning, but AA troops stopped him at a checkpoint and forced him to delete them from his phone.
He survived the fire, but the family’s livelihood was wiped out overnight. His dried fish shop was lost, as were his brothers’ construction company and gas boiler shops.
Maung Maung is part of a very small minority of the largely stateless Rohingya to have citizenship documents, so he was able to flee to Yangon, where he still lives in fear and helplessness.
“Even though I came to Yangon, some of my family members are still in trouble in Rakhine State and I can’t help them. I’m hiding as if I’m in my own country illegally,” he said, adding that if asked, he tells people he’s a Bamar Muslim.
“I was born a Rohingya, and I love the name of my people. But because I am a Rohingya, I always have to face such hardships,” he said.
Under pressure
While Rohingya militant groups and the military are largely seen as the villains in Myanmar society, the AA has been heralded as heroes of the uprising against military rule. After the military seized power in a 2021 coup, the AA trained and armed some new militias opposed to its rule. But while those groups say they fight for federal democracy, it’s not clear if the AA shares the same values. It explicitly desires confederacy status – a level of autonomy beyond federalism.
On May 22, 195 civil society groups released a statement calling for an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the AA against Rohingya civilians in Buthidaung.
“Since the protection of civilians is a military code of conduct (a norm of customary [International Humanitarian Law]) that must be particularly adhered to during wartime, we specifically call on the Arakan Army (AA) to protect all civilians, whether they are ethnically Rakhine, ethnically Rohingya, or from other ethnic and religious groups living in region,” the statement read.
Reaching nearly 200 signatories required a bit of stat padding. The organisations included a little-known podcast run by two foreign teachers and the Norway chapter of a Myanmar political party that failed to win a single seat in parliament in the last election, held in 2020.
But it also included some genuine heavy hitters: the Ta’ang Women’s Organization, close to the AA-allied Ta’ang National Liberation Army; the General Strike Committee, a coalition of activist groups that organises strikes and protests; and the Yangon Medical Network, a group of healthcare workers opposed to the regime, to name a few.
The AA responded with a press conference on June 8, where the group’s spokesperson Khaing Thu Kha slammed the statement as fake news containing baseless, one-sided accusations. As the controversy spread, two major signatories dropped off the list: the GSC and the Alliance of Students’ Unions-Yangon.
ASU-Yangon declined to comment, but a member of the group spoke to Frontier anonymously, because he wasn’t authorised to speak to the press.
“The statement included information about the Rohingya being terrorised by the AA, but many of our members wouldn’t accept that. They said the AA is a revolutionary organisation that is working to liberate Rakhine State, so it wouldn’t do such things,” said the member.
“Some other members and I said this is a war where anything could happen on the ground, and there has been ethnic conflict there in the past. We said the Rohingya whose homes were burned down are speaking out, so we need to listen to the voices of those who are suffering, but it didn’t work,” he continued. “Many of our members support the AA and recognise and respect their participation in the revolution, so they think it’s not good to talk about the AA like that.”
In the end, the majority of the members sided with the AA.
GSC spokesperson Ko Aung Bhone Maw said the group pulled out because the decision to join the statement was made without approval from all the member organisations.
“We work with internal democracy,” he said. “I have no reason to disagree with the contents of the statement and there is nothing else to comment on.”
It’s unclear how many members disagreed with the statement, but the All Arakan Students’ and Youths’ Congress quit the GSC over the incident.
Ko Naw Aung, with Defend Myanmar Democracy, told Frontier he was one of those responsible for drafting the statement, and he stands by it.
“I would like to say that when the statement was made, we had accurate information and solid evidence. We stand by the demands and positions in the statement. Before issuing a statement, the groups discussed and consulted with each other,” he told Frontier.
“I knew in advance that the AA and its supporters would criticise this statement, and I debated whether or not to respond to this, but I decided not to respond at this time due to common sense and politics. We are also preparing to issue a good report with accurate information,” he said. However, as of press time, no such report has been issued.
Naw Aung said that even though the AA said it would welcome a meeting with civil society organisations to discuss the incident in more detail, this never materialised.
“We reached out about meeting three times. At first, the AA replied that they would discuss it, but later they refused to meet,” he said.
The NUG walkback
The National Unity Government, a parallel cabinet appointed by elected lawmakers deposed in the coup, also waded into the controversy.
The NUG is largely dominated by members of the National League for Democracy, which was accused of running cover for the military during and after its 2017 massacres of Rohingya civilians in northern Rakhine. NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi defended the military from accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice, instead blaming any crimes on rogue soldiers, despite a preponderance of evidence indicating it was a systematic crackdown.
The current NUG humanitarian minister U Win Myat Aye held the same position under the NLD, during which time he famously accused the Rohingya of burning down their own homes. He also oversaw controversial policies such as the bulldozing of damaged Rohingya villages, which critics said both destroyed potential evidence of military crimes and ensured displaced Rohingya can’t return home.
The NUG has pledged to break from these policies of the past, and in some ways, has lived up to this promise. The parallel government appointed a Rohingya as its deputy human rights minister and has released statements pledging to grant them citizenship and acknowledging the atrocities committed against them – but stopped short of recognising the NLD’s role in the crisis.
The military’s 2017 violence against the Rohingya was widely supported in Myanmar society at the time, including NLD supporters, and deep anti-Rohingya prejudice remains. The NUG has therefore struggled to navigate efforts to signal to the international community that it has changed course, while also appeasing Buddhist nationalists.
After the alleged crimes in Buthidaung, the NUG released a statement in April that was quickly revised. The first version emphasised the suffering of “particularly the Rohingya” in the fighting in Buthidaung, but did not name a culprit.
The revised statement instead mentioned the suffering of the “Rakhine, Rohingya and Hindu” and squarely blamed the military – despite ample evidence that the AA committed crimes against the Rohingya population.
“We discussed not referring to the AA in the statement because there was no reliable photo or video evidence yet. However, while the statement was still being updated, Rohingya organisations sent witness accounts and photo evidence,” said an anonymous NUG source.
But this seemingly didn’t make any difference.
The source initially claimed the statement was simply updated to reflect new information.
“We had to update the statement again because we learned that among the dead, injured and people whose property was damaged were not only Rohingya but also Rakhine and Hindu people,” they said.
This doesn’t square with the sequence of events, as reports of Hindu and Rakhine homes being torched emerged before those of Rohingya homes. The other explanations – social media backfire and fear of offending the AA – appear more likely.
“To imply the AA does these things in particular may make some members uncomfortable by offending ethnic armed groups during this revolutionary period,” the source said. “Our reliance on the ethnic armed groups as allies during the revolution is why we are weak to speak out on this issue.”
Some members of the NUG then proposed releasing a separate statement on the attacks against the Rohingya population, but this was shot down by a vast majority. The source said highlighting Rakhine and Hindu victims may have also lessened the obligation to name the culprit of the crimes against the Rohingya.
“To only mention the violence against the Rohingya makes it necessary to say who committed the violence,” they said. “Therefore, we decided to issue a statement including the situation of the Rakhine and Hindi people.”
This isn’t the first time the NUG has proven indecisive on its Rohingya messaging.
In August last year, it released a statement recognising Rohingya as Myanmar “nationals”, seemingly putting to bed questions over whether a future democratic government would grant them citizenship. However, the Burmese-language statement notably avoids calling the Rohingya taingyintha, commonly translated in English as “indigenous race”. This may seem like a cosmetic difference to an international audience, but in practice the Rohingya’s decades of statelessness and apartheid has been linked to the state’s refusal to recognise them as taingyintha.
When Frontier contacted AA spokesperson Khaing Thu Kha for comment, he first asked the reporter her ethnicity.
“Are you Muslim?” he demanded. “You said that you talked to the Muslim people in that area, so I would like to know if you talked to the Rakhine and other local people … Don’t just ask for information from Muslims.”
He went on to deny the allegations.
“Spreading baseless and false information is a vulgar act, so there is no need for AA to explain further,” he said.
In an illustration of how effective the AA has been at shutting down criticism, there was even less pushback following a more explosive incident. In August, hundreds of Rohingya civilians, including women and children, were allegedly killed by an AA drone attack as they fled Maungdaw town.
This time, there was no NUG statement, and the civil society statement saw more notable drop-offs, including the Ta’ang Women’s Organization.