The Arakan Army, which took control of large parts of Myanmar’s Bangladesh-bordering Rakhine State in 2024, has allegedly destroyed Rohingya villages and built detention camps, military barracks and settlements on their land in northern Myanmar, according to a Guardian investigation.
The investigation, based on satellite images, United Nations research and survivor testimony, identified a rice field in the Hnget Thay area of Buthidaung Township, near the Bangladesh border. Rohingya people cultivated the land until 2024, but satellite imagery from 2026 showed 120 grey buildings there.
The buildings are facilities of an Arakan Army-run detention camp housing displaced Rohingya families from surrounding areas. Residents cannot enter or leave the camp without permission.
The Arakan Army has built at least 10 such camps since taking control of most of northern Rakhine State.
More than 1.2 million Rohingya live in Bangladesh after Myanmar’s ruling junta forces and Buddhist armed groups drove them from Rakhine. Muhammad Ares, 18, who lives in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, said intense fighting began in his area when the Arakan Army first arrived.
“Many civilians were killed during the fighting,” Ares said. “Eventually, the Arakan Army burned our entire village to the ground... they gathered all displaced people and forcibly took them to camps.”
Ares said the group had “essentially turned our homeland into a network of forced labour camps and military bases”.
A string of villages lies along the Mayu River in the Wet Nyo Taung area, around three miles from the detention camp. Rohingya farmers and boatmen lost their homes, farmland and fruit orchards when the area was burned in April 2024.
“They cut down all the large trees and fruit orchards and cleared the entire land,” said Muhammad Sadiq, 26. “They completely erased the physical structure of the village. They built houses on our land.”
Survivors said they were forced to demolish their own homes and use the materials to construct new facilities for the rebels, including military barracks known as the “AP Battalion” in the Wet Nyo Taung area. Young Rohingya people said they were forcibly recruited there.
“They forced us to clear roads, dig trenches and do manual labour inside their camps,” Sadiq said. “Anyone who collapsed from exhaustion was left in the sun.”
An internal UN report said at least 800 hectares of land across 23 Rohingya villages had been seized since 2024 for camps, settlements for other communities or military infrastructure. UN research documented at least 29 incidents involving the Arakan Army’s seizure of Rohingya land or displacement of Rohingya people during the period.
More than 155,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since 2024. Nearly one-quarter of an estimated 600,000 Rohingya who remained in Myanmar after the 2017 military campaign have left the country during that time. Bangladesh’s refugee camps now house 1.2 million Rohingya.
A UN expert on Myanmar, speaking to The Guardian on condition of anonymity, said, “There is no question that this is the end of the Rohingya presence in northern Rakhine.”
“Rohingya may remain in prison-like camps for as long as they can endure these horrific conditions,” the expert said. “But they will not be allowed to return to their homes.”
Testimony collected by The Guardian and information reflected in UN reports include allegations against the Arakan Army of torture, sexual violence, arbitrary arrests, forced labour, forced military recruitment and the collection of “taxes”. Myanmar’s military has previously used similar tactics.
A 32-year-old man said he was forcibly recruited and repeatedly beaten during a month in detention. Another man said Arakan Army members took away his 22-year-old daughter, subjected her to physical and sexual abuse, and forced her to undergo military training.
Many people held in the Hnget Thay detention camp are survivors of the massacre in Hoi Yar Sari on May 2, 2024.
Human Rights Watch has listed more than 170 villagers killed or missing there, including about 90 children. The Arakan Army has denied accusations of war crimes, saying it targeted only military personnel and members of Rohingya armed groups.
Nicholas Koumjian, head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, said those planning attacks on Rohingya people aimed to “create facts on the ground”. Koumjian said, however, that the UN mechanism had not yet confirmed information establishing that the Arakan Army was responsible for destroying Rohingya land.
“It appears that all parties to the ongoing conflict are targeting the Rohingya who remain inside Myanmar,” Koumjian said.
Tom Dannenbaum, a professor of international law at Stanford University in the United States, said the coordinated acts of coercion against Rohingya people and their separation from their home areas could constitute the war crime of “population transfer”.
Aung Kyaw Moe, until recently the only Rohingya member of Myanmar’s exiled National Unity Government, said the central issue was no longer whether Rohingya people could survive in Myanmar.
“The question is whether conditions are being created that will make their permanent displacement, and the erasure of their physical, political and historical presence, irreversible,” he said.
The International Court of Justice, which began hearings in January in the Rohingya genocide case, has previously considered the “systematic expulsion of people and destruction of their homes” as an element of genocide. The ICJ is due to rule this month on whether Rohingya people were subjected to genocide in 2017.