Summary

Invisible to most of the world, a devastating human rights and humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Myanmar. Increasingly isolated, desperate and violent, Myanmar’s military junta has ramped up attacks on civilians, pummeling towns that have fallen to opposition groups. Junta troops are responsible for massacres, beheadings, gang rape and torture. Women, children and the elderly have been among those killed.

Nowhere is the situation more desperate and dangerous than in Rakhine State. Junta forces have attacked Rakhine men, women and children, burning their villages to the ground. They have also intentionally stoked tensions between ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya populations, including by conscripting thousands of Rohingya men and deploying them to the frontlines of the fight against the Arakan Army. Meanwhile, Rohingya militant groups have created a tinderbox of suspicion, animosity and violence by cynically aligning with the junta and committing human rights abuses against the ethnic Rakhine population. The Arakan Army has been implicated in grave human rights abuses, including indiscriminate attacks, killings, sexual violence, and arbitrary arrests. 

Hundreds of thousands of people in Rakhine State are completely cut off from humanitarian assistance and threatened by exposure, starvation and disease. Failure to act immediately to provide emergency humanitarian aid will be a death sentence for untold numbers of innocent men, women and children.