Published : 05 Oct 2026, 11:20 PM
Updated : 05 Oct 2026, 11:20 PM
The Arakan Army has transformed parts of northern Myanmar into detention camps, military facilities and settlements after taking control, according to an investigation by The Guardian.
Using satellite imagery, UN research and survivor accounts, The Guardian found that farmland at Hnget Thay in Buthidaung township, cultivated by Rohingya until 2024, had become a detention camp with 120 buildings by 2026.
The investigation spotted at least 10 camps.
Displaced Rohingya families are held there and cannot leave or enter without permission.
"When the AA first arrived, heavy fighting erupted in our area. During these clashes, many civilians lost their lives," Muhammad Ares, 18, who now lives in Bangladesh, told The Guardian.
"The AA ended up burning our entire village to the ground... the AA gathered all the displaced people and forced them into camps."
"They have basically turned our homeland into a network of forced labour camps and military outposts," Ares said.
At Ywet Nyo Taung, villages along the Mayu River were burned in April 2024, displacing farmers and boatmen.
"They cut down all the large trees and orchards, clearing the land entirely. They completely erased the physical layouts of the villages. They built houses there on our land," Mohammed Sadik, 26, told The Guardian.
At a military facility known as the AP Battalion, young Rohingya said they were held as forced recruits.
"They forced us to clear roads, dig trenches, and perform heavy labour inside their camps," Sadik said. "If anyone collapsed from exhaustion, they were left in the sun."
An internal UN report identified at least 800 hectares across 23 Rohingya villages seized since 2024 and converted into camps, settlements for other communities or military infrastructure.
UN research has documented at least 29 cases of the Arakan Army confiscating Rohingya land or displacing residents.
The Guardian reported that more than 155,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since 2024. That is about a quarter of the estimated 600,000 who remained after the 2017 military campaign. Bangladesh hosts 1.2 million Rohingya refugees.
"This is the end of the Rohingya in northern Rakhine, there is no question about that," a UN specialist on Myanmar told The Guardian anonymously.
"The Rohingya can stay in prison-like camps in appalling conditions for as long as they can bear it, but they will not be permitted to return home."
The Guardian reported allegations of torture, sexual violence, forced labour, conscription and "taxes".
A man said he was forcibly recruited and beaten during detention. Another said his 22-year-old daughter was abducted, abused and forced into military training.
Many at Hnget Thay survived the May 2, 2024 massacre at Hoyyar Siri. Human Rights Watch says more than 170 villagers were killed or remain missing, including 90 children.
The Arakan Army denies war crimes, saying it targeted military personnel and Rohingya armed groups.
Nicholas Koumjian of the UN's Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar said those behind attacks on Rohingya "had the objective to create 'facts on the ground'". The mechanism has not confirmed the Arakan Army destroyed Rohingya land, he said.
Tom Dannenbaum, a Stanford law professor, said the displacement could amount to the war crime of population transfer.
Aung Kyaw Moe, until recently the sole Rohingya member of Myanmar's exiled national unity government, said: "The central issue is no longer whether Rohingya can survive in Myanmar. It is whether conditions are being created that will make their permanent displacement and the erasure of their physical, political and historical presence irreversible."
The International Court of Justice, hearing the Rohingya genocide case since January, has previously treated the "systematic expulsion from and destruction of homes" as an element of genocide. It is expected to rule this month on whether the Rohingya faced genocide in 2017.
