Nine Years After 2017 Massacre, Rohingya Still Forced to Flee Myanmar

August 25 is a deeply painful day for the Rohingya, marking the anniversary of the Myanmar military's 2017 genocide campaign. Infants and young children were thrown into fires. Women and young girls were subjected to systematic gang rape and mutilation. Entire families were massacred while fleeing, while others were trapped in their homes and burned alive. More than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee to Bangladesh.

The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group speaking their own Indo-European language, have faced prolonged discrimination and persecution in Myanmar.

Today, around 1.2 million Rohingya remain trapped in camps in Bangladesh, while a new wave of repression is forcing more Rohingya to flee their homes in Rakhine State. Others are risking their lives at sea in search of safety.

The Genocide Has Never Stopped

Over the past two years, the balance of power in Rakhine has shifted dramatically. The Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group, now controls most of the state, including key Rohingya areas in the north. But the brutality and persecution facing the Rohingya have not ended.

As the AA consolidates power, evidence of mass killings and deliberate attacks on civilians is mounting, confirming what the Rohingya community has long warned.

The Rohingya also face forced recruitment, forced labor, detention, and severe restrictions on movement. Sexual violence, a hallmark of the Rohingya genocide, continues under AA rule.

Rohingya in Rakhine say the violence and oppression they suffer at the hands of the AA are as brutal as the Myanmar military's ethnic cleansing in 2017. These abuses are seen as part of a deliberate strategy to push the Rohingya from their homes and continue erasing them from Myanmar.

Anti-Rohingya racism that fueled decades of persecution by the Myanmar military is also a primary driver of the AA's treatment of the Rohingya. The perpetrators may have changed, but the dehumanization and denial of their identity and rights persist.

The AA is completing what the Myanmar military began. The Rohingya are being driven from their villages and prevented from returning, while their land is confiscated and new Rakhine settlements are built on it, sometimes by forced Rohingya labor. The possibility of return is being destroyed in real time.

Nowhere Is Safe

More than 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since late 2023, even as international humanitarian funding for refugees was cut. Learning centers in Cox's Bazar have closed, and essential services have been reduced. Children fleeing genocide are growing up without education or hope for the future. Others born in the camps have never known life outside. The international community is allowing an entire generation of Rohingya children to be abandoned.

The Rohingya are being forced to choose between continued persecution at home and hunger, insecurity, and increasingly desperate lives in refugee camps.

For those forced to flee, there is often no safe path to protection. The very people pushing the Rohingya to flee often participate in and profit from their trafficking as they attempt escape. In July, two boats carrying more than 500 Rohingya, including children and young people, sank after leaving Rakhine. No one puts their children on such a dangerous journey unless staying behind is even more dangerous.

Meanwhile, anti-Rohingya sentiment is rising in countries hosting them as refugees. Governments talk about Rohingya returning home while many are being driven out and the land they would return to is being seized. The Rohingya want to go home, but with their rights: citizenship, equality, and the right to return to their own land.

Nine Years Without Accountability

For nine years, the Myanmar military leaders responsible for genocide against the Rohingya have faced no real consequences. Those who designed the genocide remain free, while the military continues to perpetrate atrocities against other communities across Myanmar. Accountability is not just about the past but about preventing ongoing violence and future atrocities.

The world cannot repeat the same failure with the Arakan Army. The pattern has been seen before, and we know where it leads. The more the Myanmar military and the AA are allowed to act with impunity, the closer they come to completely erasing the Rohingya from Rakhine.

Survivors and Rohingya organizations have spent years documenting crimes, presenting evidence, and fighting for accountability. They have to pursue justice on the other side of the world because governments and international institutions have failed to do so.

That struggle is finally yielding results. BROUK has filed a universal jurisdiction case in Argentina, leading to international arrest warrants for 22 Myanmar military officials and three civilians, including the leaders of the military junta, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and General Soe Win, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. They are also pursuing reparations for Rohingya survivors.

A ruling is also expected in the coming months in the genocide case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice.

The Rohingya are getting closer to justice in international courts, but at the same time they are being pushed further from their homeland. Legal progress means little if the Rohingya continue to be killed, driven out, and stripped of the land they hope to one day return to.

Governments must enforce the Argentine arrest warrants whenever the wanted individuals come within their reach, and Interpol must act on Argentina's request for red notices. Governments must impose coordinated targeted sanctions on the AA and the Myanmar military, along with restrictions on weapons, aviation fuel, and revenue sources that enable ongoing atrocities. Maximum international pressure must be applied on the AA to end its persecution of the Rohingya and ensure their protection and equal rights.

The UN Security Council must act. The United Kingdom, as penholder on Myanmar, must push for an urgent council meeting on the ongoing atrocities in Rakhine and the continued failure to protect the Rohingya.

Governments must restore and increase humanitarian funding for the Rohingya in Bangladesh and Rakhine, facilitate cross-border aid, and pressure the Myanmar military and the AA to end restrictions on humanitarian access.

The message is clear: Justice and accountability delivered too late will mean nothing if there are no Rohingya left in Myanmar. Justice is not just what happens in a courtroom. For the Rohingya, it means being able to return to their villages and land, restoring citizenship and rights that have been stripped away. Above all, it means being able to live freely and equally in Myanmar, never again facing persecution and genocide.