Myanmar

YANGON: Myanmar’s military-backed government said Sunday their UN ambassador — loyal to ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi — is occupying the office illegitimately, as the organisation prepares to weigh his replacement.

Myanmar has been embroiled in civil war since a military coup in 2021 ousted the elected government of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, ending the country’s decade-long experiment with democracy.

The United Nations formed a credentials committee this month to decide whether to accept Naypyidaw’s candidate for UN ambassador or stick with Kyaw Moe Tun, who has rejected the coup and for more than five years ignored the government’s claims that he no longer represents Myanmar.

Myanmar’s foreign ministry said Kyaw Moe Tun was “dismissed from civil service” effective February 27, 2021 for not complying with state orders, committing treason and colluding with “terrorist organisations”, according to a statement published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

The day before his dismissal, he made an emotional plea during an address at the UN General Assembly for the “strongest possible action” against the military coup.

The ambassador, who was appointed by Suu Kyi’s government, broke with his country’s rulers weeks after their putsch.

Leaders sanctioned

The ministry also accused Kyaw Moe Tun of misusing state funds and property, including the premises of the UN Permanent Mission of Myanmar in New York, and working with the exiled opposition “National Unity Government” (NUG), which the government has branded a terrorist group.

“Kyaw Moe Tun’s continued representation of Myanmar at the United Nations does not constitute formal recognition of his legitimacy,” the ministry said.

“Rather, his continued status is merely a temporary arrangement, with the Credentials Committee’s decision deferred annually.”

The members of the UN committee — who will weigh whether to replace Kyaw Moe Tun — include the Bahamas, Belgium, Benin, China, Jamaica, Russia, Uganda, the United States and Vanuatu.

While China and Russia are cosy allies of the Myanmar government, supplying military arms, jets and diplomatic cover, the United States has sanctioned dozens of its leaders, including former junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.

The committee generally announces its annual credentials decisions around November.

After the military snatched power, Myanmar authorities were persona non grata in many foreign capitals, but Min Aung Hlaing is making a diplomatic drive for recognition since retiring as armed forces chief and taking over as civilian president in April.

Since 2021, the civil war between the military and various pro-democracy fighters and ethnic minority armed groups has killed more than 100,000 people on all sides, according to monitor ACLED.

The rebel fighters who abandoned Falam in Myanmar in April said they gave up the strategic border town near India only after running out of bullets.

The fighters had endured a six-month assault by Myanmar’s military, including more than 2,500 air strikes and a ground assault by roughly 1,000 troops. The fall of the town, which had been under opposition control for a year, marked a strategic victory for the military: Falam is home to the only airport in Chin State and commands a trade route to the Indian border.

Within weeks, three more towns in Chin had fallen, and by late May, the military was claiming control of the entire northern part of the state.

“Falam taught us an important lesson,” said Salai William Chin, a member of the rebel Chin Brotherhood. “Capturing a town and holding it are two very different challenges,” he said, noting that maintaining  control required manpower, logistics, administration, as well as “the ability to withstand repeated attacks, especially from the air”.

But he promised to keep fighting.

“I would not measure success only by whether we permanently hold every town,” he told Al Jazeera. “Where the military has a significant advantage, especially through airpower, mobile warfare may sometimes be more effective. The important thing is to preserve our forces, protect civilians and maintain our ability to continue the struggle.”

‘War of attrition’

The retreat is part of a broader reversal. Myanmar’s opposition – a loose coalition of militias and ethnic armed organisations fighting the military that seized power in a 2021 coup – has been weakened. Their gains in 2023 and 2024, when coordinated offensives stripped the military of dozens of towns, have given way to a steady withdrawal from the urban centres the rebels had captured.

Analysts say the shift has been driven by several factors: a mass conscription drive that has refilled the military’s ranks with tens of thousands of troops, a devastating air campaign that has killed hundreds of civilians, and backing from China, which has brokered ceasefires between the military and some powerful ethnic armed groups while helping choke off weapons supplies to others.

But the military is unlikely to score “existential or politically decisive wins” against the opposition, wrote Su Mon, an analyst at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project. She warned in a recent briefing note that the country “faces a protracted war of attrition” and a mounting humanitarian crisis in the coming months.

The war, which began in the wake of a military coup in February 2021, is now in its fifth year. It began following a brutal crackdown on unarmed protesters, with young people taking up arms and forming militias known as the People’s Defence Forces (PDF). They were aided by powerful armed ethnic organisations who control Myanmar’s borderlands, some of which have fought for autonomy since the country’s founding in 1948.

According to ACLED, deaths in the conflict have now surpassed 100,000, while the United Nations says 3.9 million people have been displaced and an estimated one in three people requires humanitarian assistance.

Earlier this year, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who led the 2021 power grab, presided over tightly controlled elections, with major opposition parties barred from participating and voting impossible, or boycotted, across much of the country. He was sworn in as president in April, completing his passage from commander-in-chief to head of a nominally civilian government in Naypyidaw.

Min Aung Hlaing now says his government wants peace talks with armed opponents, including in Chin.

But the fighting continues.

Capture of strategic towns

The military has opened new operations this year in Chin, Kachin, Kayin and Rakhine States, and according to ISP-Myanmar, an independent think tank, it has now retaken 22 of the 101 towns it lost after the coup. That amounts to 9 percent of the lost territory, but the areas are strategically located and include key trade corridors linking border areas to central Myanmar, where the military’s main bases are located.

Their capture has disrupted the “economic and logistical capacity of many resistance groups”, according to Su Mon at ACLED. And “while the military has yet to fully restore its own regime administration in these areas”, she wrote, “the victories have effectively hindered resistance coordination”, and are pushing the opposition groups “away from large-scale coordinated offensives to defensive guerrilla warfare”.

The Myanmar military has lauded the battlefield wins.

Speaking in Bangkok this month, Min Aung Hlaing said Myanmar was “on the path of democracy and heading towards a better future”, while state media has run photographs of what it described as triumphant troops returning from operations around the country.

Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst, said a mass conscription drive and Chinese support have proven pivotal for the military.

Close to 150,000 troops have been added to its combat ranks since 2024 through conscription, he said, with many of the conscripts barely trained, but numerous enough to grind forward. Pressure from China has pulled two powerful opposition forces, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, out of the fight, freeing the military to redeploy troops elsewhere. Beijing also pressed the United Wa State Army, one of Myanmar’s strongest ethnic armed groups, to stop selling weapons to opposition groups, contributing to ammunition shortages nationwide.

“Unchallenged airpower has from the beginning of the war provided the [military] with a crucial advantage,” Davis added, both in resupplying troops and in carrying out attacks against opposition forces. At the same time, “the rapid proliferation of drone technology in both surveillance and strike roles, along with improved battlefield coordination between different combat arms, have both boosted [the military’s] capability”, he said.

Air campaign

The toll on civilians has been severe.

The Myanmar Internet Project counted 520 air strikes from April through June, hitting 87 townships and killing at least 314 civilians, including 41 children. Chin State was hit hardest, with 122 strikes, followed by Sagaing with 101, and Rakhine with 98.

Phil Robertson, the director of Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates organisation, said that “the inability of the resistance to counter the military’s air superiority” had weakened drive among opposition forces.

“Air attacks demoralise PDFs and other resistance troops, and scatter civilians who have supported the rebels,” he told Al Jazeera.

Still, the anti-military forces insist that the war is not lost.

Thinzar Shunlei Yi, an activist living in exile, said opposition networks are still training organisers and building support. “Even in the face of mass murder, in the face of massive violations, we have that courage and integrity that we resist, and we reject,” she said. “Myanmar people keep up that spirit, and we will keep on going.”

In Chin, Salai William Chin remained resolute.

“We do have further plans, but it is still too early to speak publicly about them,” he said. “I would not say that airpower has permanently decided the battlefield. It remains a serious challenge, but warfare continues to evolve, and resistance forces also continue to learn and adapt.”

The human rights situation in Myanmar has “plummeted to a new low”, the United Nations has said, citing the “ever-worsening brutal abuse” of the Rohingya minority and the devastating impact of illicit economies, including illegal mining for rare earths.

In a new report, published on Tuesday, the UN’s human rights office said the quest for control and legitimacy by Myanmar’s military – which seized power in a coup in 2021 – has only deepened the suffering of civilians in the country.

The military has deployed tactics such as “airstrikes, arson attacks, displacement and denial of assistance” against civilians as it battles ethnic armed groups and militias for control of the vast resource-rich country, the report said.

An estimated 8,075 civilians, including 1,074 children, have been killed since the coup, with at least 1,241 of them occurring in the past year, it said.

The toll is likely higher, the report cautioned, noting that open sources indicate that as many as 15,731 civilians may have been killed since the coup and 3,102 in the last year.

The violence has also resulted in the number of internally displaced people rising to 3.6 million, it said. Some 12.4 million people were facing acute hunger, while 400,000 young children and mothers were suffering from acute malnutrition.

In western Rakhine State, the military and the Arakan Army – a powerful ethnic armed group they are fighting against – have continued to commit widespread and systematic violations and abuses against the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority, it said.

The continuing violence, which comes nine years after a brutal crackdown that forced some 700,000 Rohingya to flee into Bangladesh, has caused renewed displacement, it said.

The report went on to accuse the Arakan Army of carrying out arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, forced labour and recruitment, and destruction of villages and religious sites.

When Rohingya try to escape forced recruitment, they are detained and “routinely subjected to ill-treatment”, with former detainees describing beatings, the removal of fingernails, and chilli being applied to genitals.

The UN human rights office said the absence of the rule of law in Myanmar has resulted in a booming illicit economy, with illegal rare earth mining in northern Kachin and northeastern Shan state strengthening the expansion of transnational criminal networks.

Satellite imagery confirmed Kachin state as the primary rare-earth mining area, with 302 new sites since 2021 – a 149 percent increase.

Mining runoff, meanwhile, has caused environmental contamination, which, in turn, has affected maternal and reproductive health, it said, citing sharp surges in miscarriages and other pregnancy complications tied to heavy metal and chemical exposure.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called the findings deeply troubling.

“This report depicts a picture of suffering, misery, and cruelty on multiple levels and across the country that is heartbreaking,” Turk said.

The high commissioner urged states, companies and investors to reconsider their involvement with the state.

“I call on all states, companies and investors to undertake serious soul-searching with respect to their actions – or inaction; to ask: is this fair and just for the people of Myanmar?”

August 25 is an incredibly painful day for the Rohingya. It marks the anniversary of the 2017 genocidal campaign by the Myanmar military. Babies and young children were thrown into fires. Women and young girls were systematically gang-raped and mutilated. Entire families were slaughtered as they fled. Others were trapped inside their homes and burned alive. More than 700,000 of our people were forced to flee to Bangladesh.

The Rohingya, who are an ethnic Muslim-majority group who speak their own language from the Indo-Aryan family, have long faced discrimination and persecution in Myanmar.

Today, about 1.2 million Rohingya remain trapped in camps in Bangladesh, while a new wave of persecution is forcing more Rohingya from their homes in Rakhine state. Others are risking their lives at sea in a desperate search for safety.

In this desperate situation, there is a ray of hope raised by international justice proceedings in Argentina and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Still, the international community is falling short in fulfilling its commitments to ensure accountability and protect the Rohingya.

The genocide never stopped

Over the past two years, the balance of power in Rakhine has dramatically changed. The Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group, now controls most of the state, including the main Rohingya areas in the north. But the brutality and persecution Rohingya face have not ended.

As the AA has consolidated its control, evidence has mounted of mass killings and targeted attacks on civilians, documenting what Rohingya communities have been warning of.

Rohingya also face forced recruitment, forced labour, detention and severe restrictions on movement. Sexual violence, a hallmark of the Rohingya genocide, is continuing under AA authority.

Rohingya in Rakhine report that the violence and oppression they now face from the AA is just as brutal as the Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing in 2017. Taken together, we see these abuses as part of a deliberate strategy to drive Rohingya from their homes and continue their erasure from Myanmar.

The same anti-Rohingya racism that drove decades of persecution by the Myanmar military is also at the heart of the AA’s treatment of the Rohingya. The perpetrators may have changed, but the dehumanisation and denial of our identity and rights continue.

The AA is completing what the Myanmar military started. Rohingya are being driven from their villages and prevented from returning, while their land is confiscated and new Rakhine settlements are built on it, sometimes by Rohingya coerced into forced labour. The possibility of return is being destroyed in real time.

Nowhere safe to go

More than 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since late 2023, just as international humanitarian funding for refugees is being slashed. Learning centres in Cox’s Bazar have closed and essential services are being cut. Children who fled genocide are growing up without education or hope for their future. Others were born in the camps and have never known a life outside them. The international community is allowing an entire generation of Rohingya children to be abandoned.

Rohingya are being forced to choose between continuing persecution in their homeland and hunger, insecurity and an increasingly desperate existence in camps.

For those forced to flee, there is often no safe route to protection. The very people forcing Rohingya to flee are often involved in and profiting from their trafficking as they try to escape. In July, two boats carrying more than 500 Rohingya, including children and young people, sank after leaving Rakhine. No one would put their children on such a dangerous journey unless staying was even more dangerous.

Meanwhile, there is growing anti-Rohingya sentiment in countries that host them as refugees. Governments talk about Rohingya returning home while more are being forced out and the land they would return to is being taken. We want to go home. But we want to go home with our rights: citizenship, equal rights and the right to return to our own land.

Nine years of impunity

For nine years, the Myanmar military leaders responsible for genocide against Rohingya have faced no real consequences. The architects of the genocide remain free, while the same military has gone on to commit atrocities against communities across Myanmar. Accountability is not only about the past. It is about stopping the violence happening now and preventing further atrocities.

The world cannot repeat the same failure with the Arakan Army. We have seen this pattern before and know where it leads. The longer the Myanmar military and AA are allowed to act with impunity, the closer we come to the complete erasure of the Rohingya from Rakhine.

Rohingya survivors and organisations have spent years documenting crimes, giving evidence and fighting for accountability. We had to pursue justice on the other side of the world because governments and international institutions failed to deliver it.

That fight is finally producing results. My organisation, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), brought a universal jurisdiction case in Argentina which has resulted in international arrest warrants for 22 Myanmar military officials and three civilians, including the military government’s leaders Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and General Soe Win, for genocide and crimes against humanity. We are also pursuing reparations for Rohingya survivors.

A judgement is also expected in the coming months in the genocide case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar at the ICJ.

Rohingya are getting closer to justice in international courts but at the same time are being pushed further from our homeland. Legal progress means little if Rohingya continue to be killed, forced out and stripped of the land to which they hope one day to return.

We have fought for years to get this far. Now governments must act. Every possible pressure point must be applied.

States must enforce the Argentinian arrest warrants whenever those wanted enter their jurisdictions, and Interpol must act on Argentina’s request for red notices. Governments must impose coordinated targeted sanctions on the AA and the Myanmar military, alongside restrictions on arms, aviation fuel and revenue streams that enable further atrocities. Maximum international pressure must be applied on the AA to end its persecution of Rohingya and ensure our protection and equal rights.

The United Nations Security Council must act. The United Kingdom, as penholder on Myanmar, must push for an urgent council meeting on the atrocities taking place in Rakhine and the continued failure to protect the Rohingya.

Governments must restore and increase humanitarian funding for Rohingya in Bangladesh and Rakhine, facilitate cross-border aid and pressure the Myanmar military and the AA to end restrictions on humanitarian access.

Governments must pursue every available route to justice and accountability for crimes by the Myanmar military and the AA. They must also be ready to respond to the forthcoming ICJ judgement.

Justice and accountability delivered years too late will mean nothing if there are no Rohingya left in Myanmar.

Justice is not only about what happens in courtrooms. For Rohingya, it means being able to return to our villages and our land. It means restoring the citizenship and rights that have been taken from us. Above all, it means being able to live freely and as equals in Myanmar, without ever again facing persecution and genocide.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Since Myanmar’s civil war escalated following a coup in 2021 more than 150,000 Rohingya have been purged from their homes and forced to seek asylum across Asia.

Most flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, where a million other members of this persecuted minority barely survive in some of the largest resettlement camps on Earth, following a brutal military crackdown in 2017.

Caught in the crossfire between the ruling military government and rebel fighters in Myanmar, some Rohingya refugees claim members of their families have been forcibly conscripted, subjected to targeted attacks and even massacred.

These atrocities are occurring in their homeland, Rakhine State, a secretive, inaccessible corner of the country largely controlled by a local armed group called the Arakan Army.

Rohingya witnesses allege that the violence and oppression they face now from the Arakan Army, Myanmar’s most powerful rebel group, is just as brutal as ethnic cleansing by the military in 2017 that first drew global attention to their plight.

Both the military and Arakan Army deny the allegations and blame each other

Working with human rights investigators from Myanmar Witness and Rohingya citizen journalists, Al Jazeera examines what has happened to this Muslim minority during the Arakan Army’s takeover of Rakhine.

This documentary also exposes how the rebel group is connected to the human trafficking of Rohingya refugees out of Myanmar, including young children and women who are subjected to sexual violence and brutality.

The Arakan Army declined to address the allegations raised in this film.  However, its leaders have previously denied accusations of targeted attacks on civilians, including two mass killings of Rohingya villagers in Rakhine. In a written statement to Al Jazeera, Myanmar’s military alleges that the Arakan Army is inciting hatred against Rohingya Muslims and has “reportedly committed acts of genocide” against them since taking control of much of the state.

With growing violence and a transnational crisis on their doorstep, Bangladesh wants to send all the refugees back to the war-torn country through a repatriation scheme.

But increased activity by Rohingya armed groups aligned with the military government is making that harder. Rohingya rebels active in the conflict reject those allegations.  When questioned about their conduct by Al Jazeera, one armed group called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) denied burning civilian homes, participating in activities that cause harm to Rohingya villagers and encouraging refugees to fight against the Arakan Army.

Using leaked documents, covertly filmed footage and exclusive interviews, Al Jazeera investigates the driving forces behind this largely forgotten humanitarian emergency.

This story is part of Myanmar Exposed, a series of reports by Al Jazeera Investigates which uncover the hidden truths of an ongoing crisis caused by the 2021 coup and civil conflict.

The Rohingya of Myanmar have faced decades of discrimination and forced displacement, and a case alleging genocide now sits before the International Court of Justice.

This film describes how military regimes rewrote citizenship laws to exclude Rohingya from registers and used identity documents, checkpoints and travel permits to control movement. It also highlights how segregation, incitement and continuing waves of violence normalised their erasure from the community.

Focusing on the 2016-2017 “clearance operations”, the film documents village burnings, mass killings and the flight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to Bangladesh. Through survivor testimony and interviews with officials and legal experts, Myanmar: The Architecture of Statelessness examines whether these crimes meet the legal threshold for genocide, how Myanmar defends itself against the allegation and what is ultimately at stake when the court delivers its verdict.