Road to Rohingya repatriation is more complex than it seems

THE BUSINESS STANDARD
Ariful Hasan Shuvo
05 April, 2025

Myanmar declaring a portion of Rohingya refugees eligible for repatriation might sound like overwhelmingly good news. But in reality, they cannot return as long as the Arakan Army controls Rakhine 

Bangladesh is now home to over a million Rohingya refugees who have fled violence in Myanmar since 2017. Photo: TBS

 A Facebook post from the verified page of the Chief Adviser to Bangladesh's interim government broke the internet on Friday. After all, it offered a ray of hope in the longstanding Rohingya crisis the country has been grappling with for over eight years now.

"Myanmar authorities have confirmed to Bangladesh that out of a list of 800,000 Rohingyas sheltered in Bangladesh, they have identified 180,000 Rohingyas eligible for return," the post reads. 

Arakan Army is also killing and torturing Rohingya, says leaders at rally

bdnew24.com
Cox's Bazar Correspondent
Published : 26 Dec 2024,

Rohingya leaders call for international intervention to ensure safe return, as over 60,000 flee to Bangladesh camps

Rohingya refugees, who fled Myanmar to escape persecution and genocide, have called for their return to their homeland, describing their life in Bangladesh as that of "birds in a cage”.

The Arakan Army’s Capture Of The Bangladeshi Border Could Prompt A Crisis With Dhaka

Andrew Korybko
Dec 16, 2024

China, Pakistan, and the US could take advantage of this to expand their military influence in Bangladesh at the expense of India’s legitimate national security interests.

Unholy Alliance: Myanmar Military Junta and Arakan Army vs Rohingya

Workers' Liberty
by martin on
Author: Hein Htet Kyaw
12 December, 2024 

Pic: displaced Rohingya in 2017, from Wikimedia Commons

The Rohingya are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group from the state of Arakan (Rakhine). A British scholar named Francis Buchanan-Hamilton said in his 1799 article "Burma Empire" that "the Mohammedans, who have long dwelt in Arakan," refer to themselves as "Rooinga, or natives of Arakan". "Inhabitant of Rohang" was the early Muslim name for Arakan.

Arakan Army poses new threat to Rohingya Muslims

Anadolu Agency
Edited By Nurbanu Tanrıkulu Kızıl
ISTANBUL Dec 03, 2024 

Rohingya refugees sit on a truck after being relocated from Southern Aceh province to Banda Aceh, Nov. 7, 2024. (AFP Photo) 

Rohingya Muslims, who have long been persecuted by Myanmar's military, are now threatened by the Arakan Army, the co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition said.

ရိုဟင်ဂျာအရေး ဆွေးနွေးရာမှာ အေအေကို လျစ်လျူမရှုဖို့ အကြံပေး

DVB News
၂၈/၁၁/၂၀၂၄

ရိုဟင်ဂျာ နေရပ်ပြန်နိုင်ရေး ဖြေရှင်းရာမှာ အာရက္ခတပ်တော် အေအေ မပါဝင်ဘဲ ဖြေရှင်းနိုင်မှာ မဟုတ်သလို လျစ်လျူမရှုဖို့ လိုအပ်တယ်လို့ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံခြားရေးရာ အကြံပေး Md Touhid Hossain (မိုဟာမက် တော်ဟိဒ် ဟိုစိန်)က ပြော

Link : Here

What The Arakan Army’s Rise Means For The Rohingya – Analysis

Arab News
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
November 21, 2024 

File photo of Arakan Army soldiers in Myanmar. Photo Credit: Arakan Army

 The Arakan Army is emerging as the dominant force in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, a dramatic shift that could redefine the region’s political landscape. Over the past year, this group has not only entrenched itself militarily, but it has also sought to carve out a role as a governing authority. This transformation, while significant, brings both opportunities and challenges for Rakhine’s people, including the long-persecuted Rohingya minority.

“ကျွန်တော့်မိသားစု မျက်စိရှေ့တင် သေဆုံးခဲ့ကြတယ်’’ - မြန်မာက အစုလိုက်သတ်ဖြတ်မှုကနေ လွတ်မြောက်လာသူတွေရဲ့ပြောပြချက်

BBC
ယိုဂီတာ လမား
ရာထူးတာဝန်, တောင်အာရှနဲ့ ပါကစ္စတန်နိုင်ငံ သတင်းထောက်
ရေးသားပေးပို့သည့်နေရာ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ် - မြန်မာ နယ်စပ်
၂၂ သြဂုတ် ၂၀၂၄ 

ဒီမြစ်ကမ်းနံဘေးတွေမှာဖြစ်ခဲ့တဲ့တိုက်ခိုက်မှုအတွင်းမှာ နီဆာတစ်ယောက် သူ့မိသားစုကို ဆုံးရှုံးခဲ့ရပါတယ်

 

ကြိုတင်သတိပေးချက် : ဒီဆောင်းပါးမှာ တချို့စာဖတ်သူတွေအတွက် စိတ်အနှောင့်အယှက်ဖြစ်နိုင်စရာ အသေးစိတ်ရေးသားဖော်ပြချက်တွေ ပါဝင်တဲ့အကြောင်း ကြိုတင်အသိပေးပါရစေ။

ဗုံးတွေ ကောင်းကင်ကနေ မြေပေါ်ကို ကျလာခါနီးအချိန်ဟာ ဖာရာ့ဇ်နဲ့ သူ့ဇနီးတို့ အတွေးထဲမှာ ငါတို့တော့ ဘေးကင်းဖို့ လက်တစ်ကမ်းပဲလိုတော့တယ်လို့ တွေးခဲ့ကြတဲ့အချိန်ပါ။

'My family died in front of my eyes’: Harrowing tales from a Myanmar massacre

BBC
Yogita Limaye
South Asia & Afghanistan correspondent
Reporting from
Bangladesh-Myanmar border
20 August 2024

 Nisar lost his family in the attack on the banks of this river

Warning: This article contains details some readers may find distressing.

Fayaz and his wife believed they were moments from safety when the bombs began to fall: “We were getting on the boat one after another - that’s when they started bombing us.”

Wails and shouts filled the air around 17:00 local time on 5 August, Fayaz* says, as thousands of scared Rohingyas made their way to the banks of the Naf river in the town of Maungdaw.

“End the Impunity”: Rohingya Muslims Under Attack by Both Burmese Army and Rebel Group

DEMOCRACY NOW
StoryAugust 15, 2024 

Topics

Burma
Rohingya
Bangladesh

Guests

Nay San Lwin
co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition.

Up to 200 Rohingya Muslims were killed in drone strikes last week in Burma as they attempted to flee to Bangladesh. This comes amid intensifying conflict between the military junta and the Arakan Army, a rebel armed group. Human Rights Watch says the military and the Arakan Army have both committed extrajudicial killings, unlawful recruitment for combat, and widespread arson against Rohingya civilians. “They are the enemy of each other, but when it comes to the Rohingya issue, they have the same intention,” says Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition. Only about 600,000 Rohingya remain in Burma, down from about 1.4 million before a campaign of ethnic cleansing began in 2016, though Nay San Lwin says the Rohingya genocide goes back even further to 1978. 

Nearly 200 Rohingyas killed in single day by Arakan Army, says activists

Maktoob Media
Maktoob Staff
August 9, 2024

Rohingya advocacy groups have said that, on 05 August, the Arakan Army (AA) attacked thousands of refugees gathered at the beach in Maungdaw Township of Rakhine State in Myanmar with drone bombs killing about 200 of them. Two Rohingya activists told

They left a trail of ash: decoding the Arakan Army’s arson attacks in the Rohingya heartland

THE STRATEGIST
13 Jun 2024
Nathan Ruser

The village of Maw Ni Bill (Oe Thei) being burnt by arson attack on May 18th.

 

In the late evening of Friday 17 May 2024, Rohingya neighbourhoods in the town of Buthidaung in Myanmar’s Rakhine State were disturbed by an ominously familiar sight. Armed gunmen had come to their doors and ordered them to leave before the gunmen set their houses alight. If they refused, they were told, they would be burnt with their house.

Arakan Army treatment of Rohingya minority poses challenge to Myanmar opposition

RFA
A commentary by Zachary Abuza
2024.06.08

 The Rakhine force, the most effective rebel army fighting the junta, vents its grievances on the battlefield.

Illustration by Amanda Weisbrod/RFA; Images by Adobe Stock

Evidence of Arakan Army culpability in mass arson attacks on Rohingya homes in western Myanmar's Buthidaung township – where satellite imagery has confirmed that more than 400 homes were burnt to the ground – poses a serious challenge to the anti-junta opposition.

BRIEFING: The Arakan Army has killed hundreds of Rohingya since late March. An urgent investigation is required!

'Arakan Army has displaced thousands in Rakhine State'

Dhaka Tribune
AFP
Publish : 22 May 2024, 03:22 PM 

File Photo: The remains of a burned Rohingya village is seen in this aerial photograph near Maungdaw, north of Rakhine State, Myanmar on September 27, 2017. Photo: Reuters

 

Rohingya activists accused a Myanmar ethnic armed group on Wednesday of displacing thousands of the persecuted minority in western Rakhine state, after the United States said it was troubled by increasing violence.

Arakan Army Takes Key Town in Western Myanmar, While Denying Rohingya Attacks

THE I DIPLOMAT
By Sebastian Strangio
May 20, 2024

The Arakan Army (AA) claims that it has seized control of a strategic town in western Myanmar after weeks of fighting, amid reports of arson attacks and mass displacement of Rohingya communities in the area.

150,000 Displaced Following Seizure Of Myanmar's Buthidaung Town By Rebels: Rights Group

EN. HABERLER
By Aamir Latif
19.05.2024

Rebel ethnic Arakan Army has reportedly taken over control of Buthidaung town in Rakhine state.

ANKARA (AA)- The reported seizure of Buthiduang town of Myanmar's Rakhine state by the rebel ethnic Arakan Army (AA) has triggered a fresh exodus, displacing 150,000 Rohingya Muslims, a Rohingya rights group said on Sunday.

On Saturday, the rebel group claimed that took complete control of Buthidaung township, home to the ethnic Rohingya population, near the Bangladesh border after the regime's Strategic Military Command in the northern Rakhine State town fell.

Arakan Army captures hundreds of junta soldiers in Rakhine

Dhaka Tribune
AFP
Publish : 06 May 2024,

• Clashes between the Arakan Army and the military have intensified since November
• The conflict has resulted in significant displacement and casualties
  

File photo: Arakan Army fighters raise their flag over an artillery gun after seizing a junta outpost in Rakhine State’s Kyauktaw Township. Photo: Collected

A Myanmar ethnic armed group said on Monday it had captured a military command and taken hundreds of junta personnel prisoner in western Rakhine state, the latest blow to the military.

Battle intensifies between rebels and military in Myanmar’s Buthidaung town

NORTHEAST NOW
NE NOW NEWS
May 2, 2024

Representative Image

Guwahati: Many people from the Hindu and Rakhine communities are trapped in Myanmar’s Buthidaung town in Rakhine state as there is a clash that is happening between the military and the rebel group, the Arakan Army.

Arakan Army’s gains enough to enable self-rule in Myanmar’s Rakhine state

RFA
A commentary by Zachary Abuza
2024.04.06 

Their strength will impact future negotiations over establishing a federal democracy and questions of citizenship. 

The Arakan Army, or AA, is continuing their sweep across Rakhine, furthering the military gains of the ethnic Three Brotherhood Alliance, of which it is a member, in Shan state. While the capture of nine towns, with a tenth in southern Chin state, is another humiliating defeat for the Burmese military, it also sets the scene for a very messy political discussion moving forward.