2024.06.28 FCCT Lunchtime discussion Conflict and communal relations in Rakhine State and Rohi......

2024.06.28 FCCT Lunchtime discussion: Conflict and communal relations in Rakhine State and Rohingya refugee camps

Over the past six months, the Arakan Army has inflicted a string of stunning defeats on the Myanmar military in western Myanmar, capturing at least 10 townships across Rakhine and southern Chin State. It has now carved out the largest area controlled by any ethnic armed group in Myanmar. But the predominantly Buddhist AA also faces significant challenges, not least in managing its relations with the minority Muslim Rohingya community.
As the conflict has intensified in western Myanmar, it has drawn in more and more Rohingya, living in Rakhine state and across the border in the world’s biggest refugee camp in Bangladesh. In Rakhine state, the military has forcibly recruited Rohingya from northern villages and internment camps near the capital, Sittwe, to provide desperately needed manpower and to foment communal tensions. Rohingya militant groups, meanwhile, are coercing or forcibly conscripting refugees from the Bangladesh camps with apparent impunity and sending them over the border, amid reports of gang warfare, kidnappings and drug trafficking in the camps.
In Rakhine state, both sides have accused each other as well as the military of burning homes and killing civilians, particularly in Buthidaung, where tens of thousands have been displaced. The AA now seems poised to take the nearby city of Maungdaw, amid concerns that the fighting could force more Rohingya to seek sanctuary in Bangladesh. The humanitarian situation in Rakhine state has drastically deteriorated, with hundreds of thousands of people from all ethnic communities displaced and facing shortages of food and other essentials.
This discussion with analysts and experts familiar with both sides of the border will explore the complex conflict dynamics of western Myanmar, the Rohingya dilemma and ways in which neighbouring countries and international organisations can work to improve communal relations and living conditions for all communities in the region.
Speakers include:
Thomas Kean, senior consultant on Myanmar and Bangladesh, International Crisis Group.
Yasmin Ullah, executive director, Rohingya Maiyafuinor Collaborative Network.
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, director, Peace and Development Initiatives-Kintha.
Gwen Robinson, editor-at-large, Nikkei Asia and past president FCCT.