September 18, 2025
RHRC-In a move widely interpreted as a strategic public relations campaign, Arakan Army (AA) Chief General Tun Myat Naing has met with Rohingya community leaders and reportedly authorized the reopening of a mosque in Maungdaw that had been closed for 13 years.
The meeting, which took place on August 30 but was only recently reported by AA-affiliated media, is being presented as an example of the AA’s engagement with and responsiveness to the Rohingya community. During the meeting, community leaders submitted a request to reopen the mosque, which was subsequently granted.
While the reopening of a place of worship is a significant symbolic act for the local community, humanitarian and political analysts urge extreme caution in interpreting this gesture. The event occurs against a backdrop of overwhelming evidence of the AA’s systematic campaign of persecution against the Rohingya, including mass killings, sexual violence, forced labor, enforced disappearances, and the imposition of apartheid-like restrictions on movement.
Critics argue that this is a classic hearts-and-minds operation designed for international consumption. After facing mounting condemnation for well-documented atrocities, the AA is likely attempting to cultivate a narrative of legitimacy and reasonable governance to counter its reputation for brutal ethnic cleansing.
The move highlights the AA’s sophisticated understanding of information warfare. By controlling the narrative through its own media outlets and presenting a single concessive act, it aims to create a misleading counterpoint to the daily realities of terror experienced by most Rohingya.
The true measure of the AA’s intentions will not be found in a single, highly publicized meeting, but in the cessation of violence on the ground, the end of forced labor, the lifting of movement restrictions, and accountability for perpetrators. Until then, this gesture remains a potentially cynical attempt to mask a ongoing genocide with a facade of tolerance.
“A Concentration Camp”: Arakan Army Reopens Highway, Formally Banning Rohingya in Apartheid Move
Northern Rakhine State, Myanmar
The Arakan Army (AA) has institutionalized a system of apartheid in Northern Rakhine State, leveraging public infrastructure as a tool of persecution against the Rohingya population. On September 3, the group reopened a major highway while explicitly banning Rohingya residents from using it, a move locals describe as life inside a “concentration camp.”
While non-Muslims are permitted to travel freely on the Kyain Chaung–Maungdaw–Kyauk Pandu highway, Rohingya Muslims are confined to their villages under a strict pass system. This deliberate policy of segregation has triggered a severe health crisis, as patients in critical need, pregnant women, and those with chronic illnesses are systematically blocked from reaching hospitals and medical care.
This is not a simple travel restriction; it is a calculated mechanism of control and collective punishment. By severing access to healthcare, markets, and neighboring communities, the AA is engineering a slow-moving humanitarian disaster characterized by isolation, hunger, and preventable death. Residents universally view the measure as a deliberate targeting of their communities, aimed at making life so unbearable that displacement becomes the only option.
The highway ban represents a terrifying evolution in the persecution of the Rohingya. It shifts from sporadic acts of violence to a cold, bureaucratic system of oppression designed to strangle the community economically and socially. The world must recognize this for what it is: the formal establishment of a 21st-century apartheid state within Myanmar, where an entire people are condemned to slow death by policy and decree.
Building Their Own Prisons: Rohingya Forced into Slavery by Arakan Army
Buthidaung Township, Northern Rakhine State
The Arakan Army (AA) is systematically conscripting Rohingya men into a brutal system of unpaid forced labor, using them as slaves to build the very infrastructure that entrenches their own oppression, according to numerous reports from villages across Buthidaung.
Since September 13, men from villages like Du Daung and Titu Bauk have been seized and compelled to work under harsh conditions. Their tasks include road construction, building military sites, and erecting militia stations—critical projects for the AA’s consolidation of control. They are forced to carry heavy loads and mix cement in extreme weather without payment, food, or safety precautions.
In a deliberate act of economic sabotage, the AA often takes multiple men from the same household. This cruel practice leaves families with no means to earn an income or cultivate their farmlands, ensuring they are plunged into immediate hunger and destitution. Humanitarian observers warn this is dramatically worsening the man-made food crisis in the region.
The AA’s use of forced labor is a devastating echo of the tactics long used by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya. It shatters any narrative that the AA’s rise represents progress or liberation for all in Rakhine State. Instead, for the Rohingya, it has merely meant a change of jailer. They remain ensnared in a vicious cycle of abuse, now being forced to build the walls of their own open-air prison through back-breaking, unpaid slavery. This practice is not an isolated abuse; it is a central pillar of a campaign aimed at their complete subjugation and eventual erasure.
“They Had Permission to Go”: Four Rohingya Men Vanish, Exposing a Tactic of Silent Terror
Sein Nying Pyin Village, Buthidaung Township
In an incident that has sent waves of terror through Rohingya communities, four men have vanished without a trace after simply venturing into a forest to collect bamboo, highlighting a brutal campaign of enforced disappearances used to paralyze a population with fear.
On September 14, the four men from Sein Nying Pyin village did everything by the book. They secured the required permission from the Arakan Army (AA) to enter the forest—a routine trip for materials needed for daily survival. They never returned.
When their desperate families approached the AA camp for help, they were met with cold denials. Soldiers claimed to have no knowledge of the men’s whereabouts and, adding cruelty to indifference, later physically blocked villagers from organizing their own search parties.
This disappearance is a masterclass in psychological terror. By targeting men who had followed the rules, the perpetrators have demolished any lingering sense of security. The message is clear: no one is safe, compliance is no guarantee of safety, and your life can be erased in an instant without a trace or an explanation.
Humanitarian observers confirm this is part of a widespread pattern. Enforced disappearances have become a key weapon alongside land seizures and forced displacement, designed to make Rohingya civilians feel utterly vulnerable in every aspect of their lives, even the most mundane acts of survival.
The four missing men of Sein Nying Pyin are more than victims; they are a specter. Their unknown fate hangs over every household, a silent warning that chills the community to its core and demonstrates that for the Rohingya in Rakhine State, the simple act of living is now an act of defiance.
“Looted by Day, Burned by Night”: Rohingya Village Terrorized in Coordinated Attack
Hoillabah Village, Maungdaw
Rohingya residents of a village in northern Rakhine State were subjected to a coordinated campaign of terror on September 15, in a stark illustration of the systematic violence being used to erase their presence from the region.
According to witness accounts, the assault on Hoillabah village unfolded in two brutal phases. In the late morning and afternoon, Arakan Army (AA) fighters, accompanied by local Rakhine civilians, looted at least three Rohingya homes, methodically stealing valuables, food stocks, and household goods—stripping families of their means of survival.
Then, under the cover of darkness, the attackers returned to escalate the terror. They set fire to four more Rohingya houses, including some that had been looted hours earlier, forcing families to flee into the night with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The calculated nature of the attacks—looting for profit and arson for erasure—points to a deliberate strategy to make life impossible for the remaining Rohingya population.
The incidents have displaced several families, compounding a catastrophic humanitarian situation already defined by apartheid-like restrictions on movement. Locals have no doubt that the violence is part of a wider campaign, supported by the AA, aimed at driving them permanently from their ancestral lands.
A pervasive information blackout in the Maungdaw region, enforced by the AA, makes independent verification of such atrocities nearly impossible. This isolation is itself a weapon, allowing violence to proceed in the shadows. The burning of homes in Hoillabah is not an isolated event; it is the latest fire in a slow-burning genocide, designed to consume a people through a combination of violence, starvation, and forced displacement.
“A Trap of Our Own Making”: AA Arrests Rohingya Returning with Official Medical Permits, Exposing Arbitrary Rule
Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State
In an act that exposes the arbitrary and brutal nature of Arakan Army (AA) rule, six Rohingya civilians were arrested on September 16 immediately upon returning to Rakhine State after legally traveling to Bangladesh for critical medical treatment—with official AA permits in hand.
The six individuals—four men and two women from Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships—had followed the AA’s own protocols to seek healthcare unavailable under the AA’s restrictive regime. They returned via ferry to Tharak Village late at night, where they were abducted by AA forces around 12:30 a.m. In a demonstration of collective punishment, the CNG tricycle driver, Mamat Ayas, who was simply providing them transport, was also detained.
This incident shatters any facade of the AA as a legitimate governing authority that follows its own rules. The arrest of individuals who complied meticulously with official procedures sends a chilling message to the Rohingya population: there is no safe course of action. Whether you obey the rules or break them, your freedom and safety are perpetually at risk.
The move represents the ultimate weaponization of bureaucracy. The AA first creates a health crisis through movement restrictions, then offers a perilous lifeline through a permit system, only to snatch it away by punishing those who use it. This creates a reality where seeking life-saving medical care is transformed into a criminal act.
This betrayal of trust makes a mockery of the AA’s recent public relations gestures, such as reopening a mosque. It reveals a core strategy of capricious and absolute power, designed to terrorize the Rohingya into total submission by demonstrating that no promise of safety will be honored. For the Rohingya, the AA’s permission slips are not passes to safety; they are traps that lead directly to a detention cell.
Killings of Rakhine and Mro Civilians Near Border Signal Dangerous Escalation
Northern Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State
The conflict in Rakhine State has taken a dangerous and complex turn with the killing of three non-Rohingya civilians near the Bangladesh border, raising fears of a broader cycle of inter-communal violence and threatening fragile ethnic relations. The victims, identified as two ethnic Rakhine—U Maung Maung Hlaing (48) and Daw Aye Sanda Nwe (38) from Taman Thar village—and one ethnic Mro man from Don Nyo village, were killed on September 17 while working in In Chaung village. The identity of the perpetrators remains unknown, and no group has claimed responsibility.
Idris’s story has sent shockwaves of fear and grief through the community, reinforcing a pervasive sense of abandonment. He is more than a victim; he is a tragic symbol of the international community’s inability to ensure basic safety and dignity for the very people it claims to protect. Without urgent and decisive action to dismantle criminal networks and restore the rule of law, advocates fear Idris will not be the last to suffer such a fate.
“We Prefer the Unknown”: Refugees Flee Government Facility, Captured in Daring Sea Escape
Anwara, Chittagong
In a dramatic act of defiance, 31 Rohingya refugees, including 17 women and children, were apprehended by the army on September 16 after fleeing the government’s Bhasan Char island facility, exposing a deep rift between official policy and the aspirations of the very people it is meant to serve.
The group, desperate for greater freedom and opportunity, had paid a broker 61,500 taka to risk a dangerous boat journey across the Bay of Bengal. Their destination was not another country, but the mainland Bangladeshi cities of Chittagong and Dhaka, where they hoped to disappear and build a life of their own choosing, away from the controlled confinement of the island.
Their capture in a special operation in Anwara and subsequent handover to a Navy camp highlights a critical failure. Despite providing modern housing and infrastructure on Bhasan Char, the Bangladeshi government has been unable to convince refugees that the island offers a viable future. Authorities acknowledged that the sea routes near Anwara are a known broker corridor, revealing a thriving black market fueled by refugee desperation.
This incident is a powerful testament to a simple, often ignored truth: safety from the elements is not the same as living with dignity. For these 31 individuals, the immense risks of a sea voyage and the prospect of living illegally in a city’s shadows were preferable to the stagnant, dependent existence on a isolated island.
Their flight is a stark message to policymakers: solutions designed without the consent and buy-in of the affected community are destined to fail. No amount of investment in infrastructure can compensate for the fundamental human need for autonomy, economic opportunity, and hope. The detention of these refugees addresses the symptom of their flight but utterly ignores the disease—a profound and growing despair.
“They Killed 17 of My Family”: A 10-Year-Old’s Firsthand Account of AA Atrocities Shatters Silence
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
In a testimony that lays bare the brutal reality of the Rohingya genocide, a 10-year-old girl has come forward with a firsthand account of mass murder and sexual violence perpetrated by the Arakan Army (AA) in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, corroborating video evidence that has recently surfaced.
The girl, Noor Alima, from Thanshok village in Buthidaung Township, is now a survivor in a Bangladesh refugee camp. In a heart-shattering statement, she described how her world was destroyed.
“My family had 19 family members and only 2 are left. The remaining 17 were killed. Killed by AA troops,” she stated, listing her murdered parents, siblings, grandparents, and relatives. “They are my villagers. Killed in front of me.”
Her account provides chilling detail of a systematic operation. “AA forced women into schools and molested them. Those who screamed were stabbed to death. I was in school at that time.”
Noor Alima identifies herself as a survivor of both the mass killing and rape. Her testimony moves from a recitation of unimaginable horror to a profound plea for humanity: “I want justice. Let there never be another genocide in Rakhine state.”
This is not just a story of survival; it is evidence. The voice of a child cuts through the politics and denials, offering a unimpeachable narrative of calculated evil. Her words confirm that the AA’s campaign involves the same atrocities—massacre, sexual violence as a weapon of war, and the targeting of children—that defined the Myanmar military’s 2017 genocide.
Noor Alima’s testimony is a direct challenge to the world. It is a demand for accountability and a warning that history is repeating itself in the very same villages, often against the very same people, now under a new perpetrator. The world must choose whether to hear her cry for justice or become complicit through its silence.
