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For years, the Rohingya crisis has been understood through one central lens: The Myanmar military committed genocide against a stateless Muslim minority and drove more than a million people from their homes. That remains true. But it is no longer the whole truth. A new Human Rights Watch report on the massacre of Rohingya civilians by the Arakan Army in Rakhine State exposes a darker and more complicated phase of the crisis. The Rohingya are not simply trapped by the old genocidal state; they are now also vulnerable to the ethnic nationalist forces seeking to inherit power in its place.
This is the new nightmare facing the Rohingya. Even where the junta loses control, they may still have no safety, no citizenship, no protection, and no future.
Human Rights Watch has documented the May 2, 2024 attack on Hoyyar Siri village in Buthidaung township, where Arakan Army fighters allegedly fired on unarmed Rohingya civilians who were trying to flee fighting near Myanmar military bases. The organization says it has compiled a list of more than 170 villagers killed or missing, including about 90 children, and that the real toll is likely higher. Survivors described bodies left in ditches, homes burned, and the village destroyed. The details emerged only after some survivors managed to flee to Bangladesh and Malaysia. The rights group says the attack amounted to grave violations of the laws of war.
This matters not only because of the horror of the massacre itself, but also because of what it reveals about the future of Rakhine State. The Arakan Army is not a marginal actor. It has become one of the most powerful armed forces in Myanmar’s civil war and has taken control of large parts of Rakhine. Many international observers have viewed it mainly through the prism of its fight against the junta. That is understandable, but dangerously incomplete. An armed group can oppose the military dictatorship and still persecute minorities. It can fight the junta and still commit atrocities. It can seek legitimacy abroad while still denying basic rights to the people under its control.
The Rohingya know this better than anyone. They have spent decades being treated as foreigners in their own land. The Myanmar state stripped them of citizenship, confined them through apartheid-like restrictions, denied them freedom of movement, and subjected them to waves of violence. In 2017, the military’s campaign of mass killing, rape, and village burning forced hundreds of thousands to flee to Bangladesh. The world eventually recognized the scale of the crime. The US declared that genocide had been committed. Cases moved forward at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Yet accountability has been slow, and protection on the ground remains almost nonexistent.
Now the balance of power in Rakhine is changing, but the underlying logic of exclusion has not disappeared. The Arakan Army presents itself as a revolutionary force fighting for Rakhine self-determination. But if its vision of self-determination excludes the Rohingya, then it is not liberation but simply another form of ethnic domination. The test of any future authority in Rakhine is not whether it opposes the junta but whether it protects all civilians, recognizes the rights of all communities, and accepts accountability for crimes committed under its command.
This is where international policy has failed to keep up. Much of the diplomatic conversation still treats the Rohingya crisis as if the main question is whether refugees can return once conditions improve. But conditions are not improving if the territory to which they would return is controlled by forces accused of killing Rohingya civilians, burning villages, and denying survivors the right to go home. Human Rights Watch said that many survivors of the Hoyyar Siri massacre remain unable to return, and that some are effectively detained by the Arakan Army.
The Rohingya crisis has exposed the moral failure of the international system.
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
That should end any simplistic talk of repatriation. Bangladesh has carried an immense burden by hosting nearly a million Rohingya refugees. It is understandable that Dhaka wants a pathway for them to return. But return without security, citizenship, freedom of movement, property restitution, and international monitoring is not a solution. It is a recipe for renewed persecution. A Rohingya refugee cannot be asked to return to a village that no longer exists, under the authority of an armed group that denies responsibility for massacres, in a country that still refuses to recognize them as citizens.
The lesson is clear. The international community must stop treating the Arakan Army as merely a military fact on the ground and start treating it as a political actor with legal obligations. If it wants engagement, humanitarian access, diplomatic recognition or a role in any future settlement, it must meet basic conditions. It must allow independent investigations, provide access to survivors and displaced communities, stop abuses against civilians, and hold perpetrators accountable. And it must make clear that the Rohingya are part of Rakhine’s future, not an obstacle to it.
This does not absolve the Myanmar military. The junta remains the principal architect of the Rohingya genocide and the wider destruction of Myanmar. Its crimes created the conditions in which the Rohingya became stateless, trapped, and exposed to every armed actor around them. But accountability cannot be selective. If only the junta’s crimes are condemned, while abuses by anti-junta forces are excused or minimized, then the Rohingya will once again be sacrificed to political convenience.
ASEAN, the UN, Western governments, and Muslim-majority states all need to adjust their approach. Humanitarian aid must be expanded for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and for displaced communities inside Myanmar. Investigations into crimes in Rakhine must include the Arakan Army as well as the military. Sanctions and engagement should be tied to civilian protection. Any future political settlement in Myanmar must include enforceable guarantees for Rohingya citizenship and security. Rohingya representatives must be included in all discussions about Rakhine’s future.
The Rohingya crisis has exposed the moral failure of the international system. The world knew what was happening before 2017 but failed to prevent the genocide. It knew what happened after 2017 and failed to deliver justice quickly enough. It now knows that the Rohingya face danger not only from the military that expelled them, but also from forces that may soon govern the land to which they are supposed to return.
The massacre at Hoyyar Siri should be a turning point. It should force governments to abandon the illusion that the defeat of the junta alone will solve the Rohingya crisis. The fall of one oppressor does not guarantee freedom if another takes its place. For the Rohingya, safety will not come from a change of flags or uniforms. It will come only when every armed power in Rakhine is made to understand that legitimacy depends on protecting the people it governs.
The Rohingya have already survived genocide, exile, and abandonment. They should not now be asked to survive a new order built on the same old hatred.
- Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is the director of special initiatives at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington. X: @AzeemIbrahim
