‘Like we are trapped’: Minorities suffer amid conflict in Myanmar’s Rakhine

AA and its political wing say it is committed to diversity in Rakhine, but there is scepticism among some minorities.

Earlier this year, artillery fire crashed through U Khup Thang’s home in Paletwa, in western Myanmar’s Chin State, killing his son. “It felt like a nightmare. I still struggle to find the words to describe it,” said U Khup Thang, an ethnic Chin farmer and labourer. Like others interviewed, he is using a pseudonym for security reasons.

U Khup Thang is one of the hundreds of thousands of people in western Myanmar whose lives have been turned upside down since last November when the Arakha Army (AA) – a powerful ethnic armed group formerly known as the Arakan Army – launched coordinated attacks against military positions.

The attacks opened a new front in a countrywide uprising against the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup. They also marked the beginning of the AA’s second major offensive since 2018, as it seeks to advance its “Arakan Dream” of autonomy over an area which ethnic Rakhine people consider their homeland.

The AA has since made dramatic territorial gains, seizing most of central and northern Rakhine State as well as Paletwa, Chin State. According to a report published in August by the International Crisis Group, the AA now seems to be “on the verge of expelling the military” from the rest of Rakhine State.

The military has retaliated for the AA’s gains by bombing and shelling markets and residential areas. It has largely targeted ethnic Rakhine people for their perceived support to the AA, but other communities have also found themselves caught up in the violence.