Rohingya - Insurgency

The most comprehensive flow of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh took place during 1991 and 1992. The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) increased its military presence in northern Rakhine State. The junta justified the exercise as a fortification against Rohingya Muslim extremist insurgents. Construction of military establishments and roads sprawled throughout northern Rakhine and the border with Bangladesh. The build-up was accompanied by compulsory labor, land and property confiscation, and forced relocation, as well as rape, summary executions, and physical torture.

In 1991 and again in 1997 and 1998, tens of thousands of Rohingyas from Arakan State fled to Bangladesh to escape abuses. Most have since returned, although 22,000 Rohingyas reportedly remain in refugee camps in Bangladesh. More than 100,000 other Rohingyas live outside the camps with no formal refugee papers.

Muslims have been targeted in riots in both Arakan State and other areas. Offering evidence of what it called a "sharp increase in anti-Muslim violence" in Burma, the State Department religious freedom report said that government security and firefighting forces reportedly did little to contain attacks on Muslim mosques, businesses, and homes during February 2001 riots in Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State, that killed and wounded both Muslims and Buddhists.

Outside Arakan State, rioting in the town of Taungoo in Pegu Division in southern Burma in 2001 targeted Muslim interests and killed some 10 Muslims and 2 Buddhists. The government responded to the violence by further restricting freedom of movement for Rohingyas and other Muslims, according to Human Rights Watch.

On 25 August 2016 the office of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi announced the appointment of former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan to chair the nine-member commission, which includes three international representatives, four Buddhist and Muslim members from Myanmar, and two Myanmar government representatives.

Rakhine nationalists in Myanmar rejected the proposal for former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to head a commission to discuss ethnic conflict and clashes in Myanmar's Rakhine state. In a letter to the government, the Arakan National Party (ANP), which represents the interests of the ethnic Rakhine people in Rakhine state and in the commercial capital Yangon, demanded that the commission be disbanded. Arakan National Party vice chairperson Aye Nu Sein said the creation of a commission led by foreigners with no background knowledge or capacity to understand the circumstances in Rakhine state would undermine the rights of all of Burma's ethnic groups, as well as Myanmar's sovereignty. She said it was not necessary to form another commission, since the administration of former President Thein Sein had created a Rakhine affairs investigating commission.