Rohingya community facing gravest threats since 2017: Amnesty : Valley Vision

Newly arrived Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh need urgent access to food, shelter and medical attention after enduring the worst violence against their communities since the Myanmar military-led campaign in 2017, Amnesty International said earlier this week.

In 2017, some 10,000 Rohingya men, women, children and newborns were killed, more than 300 villages burnt to the ground, and over 700,000 were forced to flee to Bangladesh in search of safety, joining tens of thousands who fled earlier persecutions.

Approximately 600,000 Rohingyans remain within the Rakhine state where intense fighting between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army—one of many armed groups opposing the junta.

Hundreds of thousands have been internally displaced and upwards of tens of thousands of Rohingya have crossed the border or are waiting to cross the border to seek refuge in Bangladesh.

“Once again, the Rohingya people are being driven from their homes and dying in scenes tragically reminiscent of the 2017 exodus. We met people who told us they lost parents, siblings, spouses, children and grandchildren as they fled fighting in Myanmar. But this time, they are facing persecution on two fronts, from the rebel Arakan Army and the Myanmar military, which is forcibly conscripting Rohingya men,” Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, said.

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

“Those lucky enough to make it to Bangladesh do not have enough to eat, a proper place to sleep, or even their clothes.”

The 2021 military coup in Myanmar has had a catastrophic impact on human rights. Myanmar’s military has killed more than 5,000 civilians and arrested more than 25,000 people. Since the coup, Amnesty has documented indiscriminate air strikes by the Myanmar military, torture and other ill-treatment in prison, collective punishment and arbitrary arrests.

The recent escalation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State started in November 2023 with the launch of a rebel counter-offensive by the Arakan Army and two other armed groups that have posed the biggest threat to military control since the 2021 coup. Myanmar’s military has responded by stepping up indiscriminate air strikes that have killed, injured and displaced civilians.

In Bangladesh, authorities have been pushing Rohingya fleeing the conflict back into Myanmar, while those who reached the Bangladesh camps told of a desperate shortage of essential supplies and services there.

In September 2024, Amnesty interviewed 22 people in individual and group settings who recently sought refuge in Bangladesh, joining more than one million Rohingya refugees, the majority having arrived in 2017 or earlier.

The new arrivals said the Arakan Army unlawfully killed Rohingya civilians, drove them from their homes and left them vulnerable to attacks, allegations the group denies. These attacks faced by the Rohingya come on top of indiscriminate air strikes by the Myanmar military that have killed both Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine civilians.

Many Rohingya, including children, who were fleeing the violence to Bangladesh drowned while crossing by boat.

The Myanmar military has persecuted Rohingya for decades and expelled them en masse in 2017. It is now forcing them to join the army as part of a nationwide military service law. The Myanmar military has also reportedly reached an informal “peace” pact with the Rohingya Solidarity Organization, an older Rohingya armed group that has reemerged as a force in recent months. These complex developments have further inflamed tensions between the Rohingya and the ethnic Rakhine, whom the Arakan Army purports to represent.

The rise in fighting nationwide has also resulted in mounting allegations of abuses by armed groups fighting against the military. Many Rohingya described the fatal consequences of being trapped between the two sides.