Myanmar Spring Chronicle – October 11: Scene
(MoeMaKa, October 12, 2025)
Interwoven Issues of Democracy, Ethnicity, and Human Rights
Across Myanmar’s ongoing civil war, fierce battles continue over territory, towns, and military bases. Yet among all these conflicts, Rakhine State stands out with an added layer of complexity—the unresolved question of the Rohingya refugees, over a million of whom remain displaced in neighboring countries.
While Karen and Chin States also face refugee crises—many of their people having crossed into Thailand or India—their situations differ in nature. Once political and military resolutions are achieved in these regions, the refugee problems there could likely be solved more straightforwardly. In Thailand, for example, Karen refugee camps have existed for nearly three decades. The refugee issue there has long been viewed as one intertwined with the internal conflict, not a separate humanitarian crisis.
Recently, Thailand allowed refugees in its Karen border camps to legally seek employment within the country. This shift came partly due to declining international humanitarian aid, and also coincided with Thailand’s need for workers after Cambodian migrant laborers returned home during recent border tensions. Many observers have welcomed this as a practical step forward—a policy change addressing a decades-old humanitarian situation.
By contrast, the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, now nearly eight years old, remains far more complex. It involves larger political and military actors, making it not just a humanitarian issue but also a politicized conflict.
In late August 2025, Bangladesh hosted an international conference on the Rohingya issue in Cox’s Bazar, followed by another at the UN Headquarters in New York in late September. These gatherings urged international governments and organizations to increase engagement and pressure for a resolution.
Neither the Arakan Army (AA)—which now controls much of Rakhine State—nor the Myanmar junta, which aims to retake lost territory, participated in or were invited to these conferences. Even if invited, it is doubtful either party would have attended. This absence highlights how far the situation remains from any realistic solution.
Given that the key stakeholders are still unwilling or unable to engage in dialogue, the meetings appeared aimed more at urging international support and humanitarian aid for refugees than at achieving genuine political progress.
The Rohingya crisis predates the 2021 coup. For decades, successive Myanmar governments have exploited ethnic nationalism and stoked communal divisions between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya populations for political and military advantage.
Back in the late 1970s, under the BSPP socialist regime, military operations in Rakhine forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh. That crisis was eventually resolved with UN mediation and repatriation.
A similar tragedy occurred again in 2017, when ARSA militants attacked border posts, prompting the military to launch brutal “clearance operations.” These operations targeted not just ARSA fighters but also tens of thousands of Rohingya civilians, leading to mass killings and the flight of nearly one million refugees into Bangladesh.
The 2017 massacres, later brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as acts of genocide, marked a turning point. The ICJ case—filed in 2019 under the 2008 Constitution’s NLD-led government—held Myanmar accountable for atrocities committed by its military. Aung San Suu Kyi herself led Myanmar’s defense delegation in the first hearing.
Over time, more evidence and testimonies have emerged about the 2017 killings. It remains unclear, however, how much the NLD government actually knew of or acknowledged these atrocities at the time. Former Speaker of Parliament Mann Win Khaing Than later revealed in a post-coup interview that the NLD government did not appear to have conducted any meaningful internal investigation into the massacres.
Between 2017 and 2019, before the ICJ case escalated, the NLD government formed commissions and committees to explore repatriation efforts. Yet these attempts seemed more focused on understanding the humanitarian scope of the crisis than on addressing the mass killings themselves.
Before those efforts could mature, Myanmar’s political trajectory was once again derailed by the 2021 military coup, which plunged the nation into renewed chaos.
Since then, Rakhine’s political and military landscape has changed dramatically. Before the coup, the military had reached an informal ceasefire with the AA, even delisting it from “terrorist” status after seizing power. However, hostilities resumed when the truce broke down, and by the time of Operation 1027, the AA had captured numerous towns and bases across Rakhine.
Amid this shifting balance, reports have emerged that the junta, once hostile to Rohingya armed groups like ARSA, is now engaging them for intelligence sharing or limited military coordination—raising the risk of new communal tensions between AA-controlled areas and Rohingya communities.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh itself has been undergoing political upheaval. Mass protests forced long-time Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country, and interim leader Mohammad Yunus has taken power, launching legal proceedings against officials accused of past human rights violations.
At the same time, allegations have surfaced that during AA’s latest offensives against the junta, Rohingya civilians were among those killed in large numbers—sparking new accusations of war crimes.
While these killings cannot be equated with the 2017 genocidal massacres by the Myanmar military, all actors—including the AA—now face moral and legal responsibilities to prevent and account for abuses against civilians.
In such a deeply entangled web of civil war, ethnic nationalism, and mass atrocities, an easy or immediate solution remains distant. For real progress, all sides—armed groups, political organizations, and governments alike—must prioritize human compassion, human rights, and practical solutions over narrow ethnic or political interests.