Press Release

ARNC Strongly Supports HRW Report on Arakan Army Massacre; Urges Immediate International Action to Prevent ‘Final Genocide’ of Rohingya

The Arakan Rohingya National Council (ARNC) welcomes and strongly supports the Human Rights Watch report, “Skeletons and Skulls Scattered Everywhere”. Arakan Army Massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Hoyyar Siri, Myanmar, released on 18 May 2026.

The report provides deeply disturbing evidence that the Arakan Army killed at least 170 Rohingya men, women, and children in Hoyyar Siri village, Buthidaung Township, on 2nd May 2024, with the actual death toll likely far higher. Human Rights Watch’s findings, based on survivor testimonies, satellite imagery, and verified photographs and videos, confirm what Rohingya survivors, communities, and leaders have been reporting for the past two years: that the Arakan Army has committed grave atrocities against Rohingya civilians amounting to war crimes.

This report also confirms ARNC’s long-standing claims that the Arakan Army’s atrocities against the Rohingya people are widespread, systematic, and far more rampant than previously acknowledged. The Hoyyar Siri massacre is not an isolated incident, but part of a broader campaign of persecution, violence, displacement, and terror against Rohingya civilians across Arakan.

ARNC expresses its deepest condolences to the families of the victims of the Hoyyar Siri massacre and to all Rohingya civilians who have been killed, disappeared, detained, tortured, displaced, forcibly recruited, or forced to flee under Arakan Army persecution. Across Arakan, many thousands of Rohingya have been killed, displaced, starved, detained, and terrorized. Thousands more have perished at sea while attempting to flee persecution, siege, starvation, and systematic violence. This never-ending violence has become a continuing tragedy for the Rohingya people.

The international community must not remain silent. Silence in the face of these atrocities will be understood by the perpetrators as consent. Continued inaction will only embolden the Arakan Army to persecute the Rohingya with total impunity and may lead to the final genocide of the remaining Rohingya in Arakan.

ARNC calls on the United Nations, ASEAN, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, regional powers, and all concerned governments to take urgent action to protect Rohingya civilians in Arakan. The international community must support independent investigations, preserve evidence, and ensure accountability for all perpetrators, including the Arakan Army and its political wing, the United League of Arakan.

ARNC further calls for:

1. An immediate end to all attacks, persecution, forced labor, arbitrary detention, movement restrictions, forced recruitment, and starvation policies against Rohingya civilians in Arakan.
2. Unrestricted humanitarian access to all Rohingya communities under Arakan Army control.
3. Full cooperation by the Arakan Army and United League of Arakan with the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, and other international accountability bodies.
4. Targeted sanctions against Arakan Army and United League of Arakan leaders credibly implicated in atrocities against Rohingya civilians.
5. International protection mechanisms for the remaining Rohingya in Arakan, who face an existential threat.
6. Full accountability for the Myanmar military’s genocidal acts and genocide committed against Rohingya during the 2016/2017 so-called clearance operations. The Myanmar military and its commanders must be held responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
7. Recognition that conditions do not exist for the safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable return of Rohingya refugees to Arakan while the Arakan Army and Myanmar military continue to persecute Rohingya civilians.

The Rohingya people have already survived decades of state-sponsored genocide, apartheid, mass displacement, and denial of citizenship. They must not now be abandoned to a new wave of persecution under the Arakan Army.

ARNC urges the international community to act before it is too late. Justice delayed will mean more mass graves, more deaths at sea, and the genocide of the remaining Rohingya people in their ancestral homeland.

 For more information, please contact:

• Tun Khin: +44 78 8871 4866
• Nay San Lwin: +49 176 6213 9138
• Khairul Amin: +47 9 242 8989