By Ruma Paul, Shoon Naing, Wa Lone, Poppy McPherson and Devjyot Ghoshal
(Reuters) – Saifur Rahman woke up to screams. In the darkness, the air reeked of fuel. Flames blazed in the distance.
The town of Buthidaung in Rakhine state, Myanmar’s largest settlement of minority Rohingya, was on fire and under attack.
“All I could see was fire,” said the 30-year-old Rohingya. “We knew something bad could happen but never imagined this.”
When the fires subsided, much of the riverside town near Myanmar’s western border with Bangladesh was smouldering debris, rendering thousands of Rohingya homeless. Initial estimates suggest at least 45 Rohingya died during the attack and its immediate aftermath, a senior United Nations official said.
The attack at around 10 p.m. on May 17 was the latest of many bouts of violence against the Rohingya, Myanmar’s largely Muslim ethnic minority group, which suffered what the U.N. called “textbook ethnic cleansing” at the hands of the Buddhist-majority country’s military in 2017.
That year, the military spearheaded the killing of an estimated 10,000 Rohingya, sending more than 700,000 fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh, according to the U.N. Since then, fighting has flared between junta troops and the powerful Arakan Army ethnic militia in Rakhine state, with combat intensifying in recent months as the rebels scored major victories.
Reuters interviewed 12 Buthidaung residents on the phone as well as near refugee camps in Bangladesh, and reviewed satellite imagery of the area taken before and after the fires to reconstruct the events of May 17. The news agency found that the party directly responsible for the May arson attacks was not the military but the Arakan Army, which is composed mainly of ethnic Rakhine, the Buddhist majority in Rakhine state.
Like many other ethnic armies in the country, the Arakan Army, often called the AA, has been engaged in a brutal civil war against the junta since it overthrew Myanmar’s civilian-led government in a 2021 coup. Founded in 2009, the Arakan Army has long fought the Myanmar state for the “liberation” of Rakhine and the creation of an autonomous enclave.
James Rodehaver, head of the U.N. office on human rights for Myanmar, told Reuters that “every indication” from his organisation’s interviews with residents suggested the Arakan Army was responsible. He said residents described Arakan Army soldiers armed with petrol-soaked sticks setting fire to buildings, and that other potential “malefactors” like the junta were not in the area at the time.
His remarks are the first time the U.N. has indicated responsibility for the blaze. Their research was ongoing, he said.
The findings by the U.N. and Reuters contradict comments made to Reuters by Arakan Army spokesman Khine Thu Kha on May 19 that the burning of Buthidaung was due to a junta airstrike before the militia took over the town.
Rodehaver told Reuters there was “no indication at all” of airstrikes having caused the fires and no reports of large explosions that typically suggest such attacks.
Nathan Ruser, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think-tank, reviewed imagery of Buthidaung supplied by satellite firm Planet Labs before and after the blazes and said they perfectly match a ground campaign of arson attacks by the Arakan Army in northern Rakhine that he has closely studied.
“But it’s almost impossible without on-the-ground investigation to fully rule out the possibility of airstrikes (by the junta) in the town itself,” Ruser said.
Presented with Reuters’ findings, Khine Thu Kha said that they were “groundless accusations” and that the rebel group had helped civilians without discriminating on the basis of religion.
“We, Arakan Army, did not burn anything,” he said. “There isn’t an innocent civilian who died because of our troops.”
Myanmar’s information ministry said in response to Reuters questions that the military did not ignite communal tensions or set fire to any parts of Buthidaung while it was under their control.
It said the military was a “legally recognized armed organization… conducting disciplined activities aimed at fully protecting and defending our country,” and attributed blame for the incidents to the Arakan Army, which it described as engaging in “terrorism.”
International watchdogs like Amnesty, as well as Rohingya activist groups, have previously accused the Arakan Army of abuses like abductions. It has always denied the allegations.
Reuters also found that the junta helped fuel the latest conflict between the Rakhine majority in the state and Rohingya by forcibly recruiting members of the Muslim minority – whom they previously sought to eliminate – to burn down their Rakhine neighbours’ homes in Buthidaung earlier this year.
Two Rohingya men from Rakhine told Reuters that they had been abducted and conscripted this year by the junta, which is facing a severe manpower shortfall after major battlefield defeats in the civil war.
Three other former Rohingya residents of Buthidaung said they had seen local Rohingya being forcibly conscripted and deployed to burn the properties of Rakhine residents who had fled.
Some residents spoke on condition that only part of their names be used due to fear of retaliation.
Ethnic Rakhine participated in the purge of the Rohingya in 2017, Reuters has previously reported.
The military’s strategy of forcibly recruiting “thousands” of Rohingya is aimed at stoking communal divisions, said Thomas Andrews, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.
“For Rohingya people, oppressed, scapegoated, exploited, and stuck between warring parties, the situation carries echoes of the lead-up to the genocidal violence of 2016 and 2017,” Andrews said.
‘TIME FOR REVENGE’
The violence in Buthidaung began earlier this year, when fighting between Arakan Army and junta troops neared the town. Many Rakhine locals left in March, according to five residents and a humanitarian official briefed on the situation.
The Buthidaung area had a population of around 55,000, according to the last census held in 2014. That does not include the Rohingya – whom both the deposed civilian government and the junta consider to be illegal immigrants, though they have been in Myanmar for generations – who numbered more than 100,000, according to two Rohingya activists.
The forced recruitment of Rohingya in Buthidaung dates back to at least March, when 24-year-old Ali said soldiers barged into his house at around midnight.
They picked up two dozen Rohingya that night, who were told by the soldiers that “youths would have to take up arms to free the country from terrorism,” he said.
Another Rohingya man from Buthidaung also said that he was conscripted by the Arakan Army to fight against the junta.
A 15-year-old Rohingya boy separately told Reuters that he was taken by a military-aligned Rohingya insurgent group from a refugee camp in neighbouring Bangladesh in April and brought to Rakhine state to fight a “jihad.”
Ali said he was taken to a military training camp where he was taught to use weapons. Eight days after his abduction, he was ordered to collect water and managed to escape. He now lives in Bangladesh, after fleeing Myanmar on foot and via boat.
The next month, military officers started pressuring Ali’s fellow Rohingya conscripts into burning and looting their Buddhist neighbours’ homes, according to three former Buthidaung residents who witnessed the arson.
“‘These Rakhine people killed your people and burned your houses in 2017’,” said Sawyed, who lived in the town’s northeast, recalling what soldiers told Rohingya conscripts. “‘Now, it is time for revenge.’”
“Community members and elders tried to stop them,” another eyewitness said. “But they were unstoppable.”
Satellite imagery from Planet taken in mid-April shows large sections of southern and western Buthidaung scorched by fires between April 13 and April 16, when Medecins Sans Frontières reported its office adjoining the main highway cutting through town had also been burnt down.
The medical charity did not publicly blame any party for the incident that took place on April 15. MSF said in a statement to Reuters that it had been forced to suspend its activities in Buthidaung due to escalating conflict and that “communities are being left with no options for medical care.”
Around 1,500 buildings in Buthidaung were burnt down during the April arson spree, according to a count from satellite imagery by Data for Myanmar, an independent research group.
Andrews, the U.N. expert, told Reuters that arson attacks on civilian property and humanitarian agencies “may also amount to crimes under international law” by both sides and urged an International Criminal Court investigation so that “all perpetrators (are) held accountable, regardless of their affiliation.”
The ICC did not return a request for comment. The court in 2019 opened an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity targeting the Rohingya but the scope of the probe is limited to offenses where at least one element was committed on the territory of Bangladesh.
Aung Chay, a 27-year-old ethnic Rakhine schoolteacher from Buthidaung whose house was burnt down, said he had lived peacefully with the Rohingya.
But then, “they purposely torched our houses by joining the junta,” he said.
‘FIRE ALL AROUND’
Dozens of areas near Buthidaung were set alight between April 15 and May 18, according to an analysis of satellite imagery conducted by ASPI’s Ruser.
At least two smaller Rohingya settlements near Buthidaung were set ablaze in May as the Arakan Army advanced through the countryside, according to a Reuters analysis of satellite imagery cross-referenced against locations that the militia announced it had captured.
The U.N.’s Rodehaver said their analysis of the burning of Rohingya settlements in the days prior to the arson in Buthidaung suggested targeted destruction, with only Muslim areas set ablaze. A similar “very strategic set of burnings” was seen during the arson of Buthidaung, he said.
Junta troops in Buthidaung withdrew by May 15, according to four Buthidaung residents, raising hopes that there would not be a battle for control of the town.
“At first, we thought the AA wouldn’t trouble us because there was no need to fight in the town,” said Sawyed. “So, we prepared ourselves to make friends.”
Around 6:30 p.m. on May 17, three Rohingya elders met Arakan Army fighters on the outskirts of a nearby village.
The Arakan Army instructed residents to not leave Buthidaung before the morning, according to two people familiar with the matter. But at least some Rohingya were separately told to leave immediately, according to the U.N’s Rodehaver, who said the militia had given similar warnings before torching other settlements they advanced on.
But only a few hours later, Arakan Army soldiers – identifiable by their uniforms and the Rakhine dialect they spoke – marched into Buthidaung, according to five Rohingya residents.
At approximately 9:30 p.m., a 24-year-old shopkeeper who identified himself by what he said was his nickname of Nuru saw AA troops in a northern neighbourhood.
Chaos erupted soon after. “Many people fled their homes, warning us that the AA were coming and burning houses,” he said.
At around the same time, 38-year-old grocer Zaw Win spotted houses ablaze in the southern part of the town.
“There was fire all around us – from the north, east, and south,” he said. “They were setting fires to surround us.”
Rodehaver said the Arakan Army used burning sticks doused in petrol that were flung to start and spread blazes. Similar tactics were used against the Rohingya in 2017, Reuters previously reported.
The area around Buthidaung’s main hospital, where dozens of Rohingya had sought shelter, was also set alight by Arakan Army fighters, two eyewitnesses said.
“I heard the people yelling and begging for help,” one of them said, describing a house filled with people that was on fire.
The neighbourhoods identified by Nuru, Zaw Win and other eyewitnesses match the areas razed by fire in satellite images reviewed by Reuters.
Many of Buthidaung’s Rohingya fled west along the main road, towards the coastal settlement of Maungdaw.
Even away from the fires, the danger wasn’t over. By midnight, a crowd that was fleeing in the direction of Maungdaw started gathering in the fields surrounding Buthidaung prison.
But they were blocked by Arakan Army soldiers, some of whom fired in the air, triggering more chaos, according to three eyewitnesses.
Saifur Rahman, his wife Jamila and their children, aged five and two, escaped the crush – but only after his brother had been killed in the melee, he said.
“The town was reduced to ashes before my eyes,” said Jamila. “It was no less than hell on earth.”
The family set off on foot for Bangladesh, a journey that took them six days. Buthidaung is separated from coastal areas abutting Bangladesh by a mountain range and Rahman said his family survived by eating leaves and coconuts.
“I only knew that I needed to protect my daughters and my wife,” he said in an interview near the Bangladesh town of Cox’s Bazar, where sprawling refugee camps are located.
Once accepting of displaced Rohingya, Dhaka has said it will welcome no more refugees from its war-torn neighbour, leaving Rahman fearful of deportation. The Bangladesh interior and foreign ministries did not return requests for comment.
“Nothing is left there,” Rahman said. “They will kill us.”
(Additional reporting by Vijdan Mohammad Kawoosa; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Katerina Ang)