Chapter 4. 9 -12 June 2012: Violence Spreads Across Northern Arakan
Section 1. 9 June: From the Maungdaw Confrontation to a Wider Crisis
The violence that erupted in Maungdaw on 8 June did not end with the confrontations described in the previous chapter. By the following day, the crisis was spreading beyond the locations where the initial clashes had occurred and into residential neighbourhoods, roads and surrounding villages of northern Arakan. This marked an important change in the character of the violence. The events of 8 June had centred on demonstrations following Friday prayers, clashes in and around Maungdaw, attacks on civilians and property, and the first shootings by security forces. From 9 June onward, Rohingya communities increasingly faced a broader and more dangerous environment in which movement was restricted, communications between villages became difficult, security forces were reinforced, and reports of attacks, shootings, arson and displacement began emerging from locations beyond the original confrontation.
Additional security forces were deployed as the authorities attempted to contain the spreading unrest. Contemporary reporting indicated that army units were sent to reinforce security personnel in the Maungdaw and Buthidaung areas. Official accounts presented these deployments primarily as measures intended to restore order and protect communities after the destruction of the previous day. Rohingya witnesses and organisations, however, increasingly described a different experience. They reported that restrictions were being applied in ways that left Rohingya residents confined or afraid to leave their homes, while Rakhine groups were allegedly able in some locations to move with greater freedom. Rohingya accounts also began alleging cooperation between Rakhine attackers and members of local security forces. Not every individual allegation from these chaotic days can now be independently verified, but the broader concern cannot simply be dismissed: later investigations by international human-rights organisations documented instances in northern Arakan in which armed Rakhine civilians accompanied or cooperated with security personnel during operations affecting Rohingya communities.
The geography of northern Arakan made the expansion particularly dangerous. Maungdaw and Buthidaung were not simply two towns in which opposing crowds could be separated. Much of the Rohingya population lived in networks of villages and village tracts connected by narrow roads, waterways, agricultural land and local markets. Families depended on movement between these settlements for food, work, medical treatment, religious life and contact with relatives. Once roads became dangerous and movement was restricted, individual villages could rapidly become isolated. Residents often had little reliable information about what was happening only a few kilometres away.
Contemporary Rohingya reporting described fear spreading through settlements surrounding Maungdaw during 9 June. Many residents reportedly remained inside their homes, while others moved away from exposed locations or sought refuge among relatives in villages where larger Rohingya populations appeared to offer greater protection. Rumours of approaching attackers, burning houses and shootings circulated rapidly. In such circumstances, rumours and verified events became difficult to separate. For Rohipedia's historical record, this distinction is important: individual allegations should be attributed to the witnesses and organisations that recorded them, while patterns subsequently corroborated by independent investigations should be identified separately.
Rakhine civilians were also suffering during this stage of the violence. Rakhine homes had been attacked and burned during the disturbances, and Rakhine families were among those killed, injured or displaced. Human Rights Watch subsequently documented violence committed by members of both Rohingya and Rakhine communities during the June upheaval. Preserving this evidence does not diminish the Rohingya experience. Rather, it helps identify what increasingly distinguished the situation faced by Rohingya civilians: they were already a stateless population subjected to severe restrictions, and the institutions responsible for protecting civilians would themselves soon face serious allegations of discriminatory violence against them.
For Rohingya communities, therefore, the arrival of additional armed forces did not necessarily create a sense of protection. Testimonies emerging from the affected areas increasingly expressed fear that responsibility for the violence of 8 June was being transferred from particular individuals to the wider Rohingya population. Rohingya residents feared collective punishment, arbitrary arrest and attacks carried out under conditions in which they had little possibility of leaving the affected area.
The developing crisis also extended toward Buthidaung and the road connecting it with Maungdaw. Security was tightened as authorities attempted to prevent the violence from spreading farther across northern Arakan. The surviving documentary record for Buthidaung on 9 June is less detailed than the record for Maungdaw, and it would be historically irresponsible to manufacture a village-by-village chronology where evidence is unavailable. What the available material does show is that Buthidaung was already being drawn into the expanding security crisis, while movement along the Maungdaw–Buthidaung corridor became increasingly uncertain and dangerous.
By the end of 9 June, therefore, the crisis was no longer confined to the confrontation that had erupted in Maungdaw the previous day. Violence and fear were spreading geographically; roads and village connections were becoming unsafe; security forces were being reinforced; civilians from both communities were displaced; and Rohingya communities were increasingly reporting that the state forces sent to restore order were not necessarily providing them with equal protection.
The following day, 10 June, would mark another decisive transition. President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in Arakan State, expanding the role of the armed forces. At the same time, Rohingya organisations were already reporting a rapidly rising Rohingya death toll. The combination of emergency rule, continuing violence and the expanding security response would shape the next stage of the crisis across northern Arakan.
Section 2. 10–11 June: Emergency Rule, Rising Rohingya Casualties and the Spread of Violence
On 10 June 2012, President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in Arakan State, expanding the authority of the military to intervene in the crisis. Officially, the measure was presented as necessary to restore order and prevent further violence between communities. For Rohingya communities in northern Arakan, however, the declaration did not bring an immediate end to killings, shootings, destruction or fear. Human Rights Watch later documented serious abuses against Rohingya by security forces from approximately this period onward, while Amnesty International subsequently reported mass sweeps involving NaSaKa, police and the army in Rohingya-populated areas. The declaration therefore marked an important transition: the violence was no longer only a confrontation between civilians, but was increasingly occurring within an emergency-security environment in which Rohingya witnesses also began accusing members of the state security apparatus of abuses.
Even as the violence continued, Rohingya organisations were reporting casualties considerably higher than those appearing in early official accounts. On 10 June, eight Rohingya organisations—including the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation (ARNO), Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), Burmese Rohingya Community in Norway, and other Rohingya organisations based in Asia and Europe—issued a joint statement reporting that at least 100 Rohingya were believed to have been killed, with many others injured. The statement was issued while communications with affected areas were severely disrupted and before independent investigators had been able to conduct a comprehensive casualty assessment. The figure must therefore be understood as a contemporary Rohingya estimate rather than a verified final death toll. Nevertheless, it is an important part of the historical record because it documents what Rohingya organisations said they were receiving from affected communities while the violence was still unfolding.
The scale reported by Rohingya organisations continued to increase as information emerged from areas that had been difficult to reach. By 28 June, BROUK President Tun Khin reported during a meeting at the British Parliament that information received by his organisation indicated that as many as 650 Rohingya had been killed, approximately 1,200 were missing and more than 80,000 had been displaced. Other Rohingya organisations circulated still higher estimates concerning the wider June violence. These figures cannot simply be treated as confirmed casualty totals: access was restricted, communications were poor, families had been dispersed, and many people classified as missing could not immediately be confirmed dead. Yet the Rohingya estimates should not simply be discarded in favour of much lower official figures either. Human Rights Watch subsequently concluded that an accurate death toll remained unknown and regarded the government's reported casualty figure as likely a serious underestimate. The competing casualty figures, missing-person estimates and evidence concerning the overall scale of killing will be examined systematically in Chapter 7.
Against this background, contemporary Rohingya sources continued to report shootings and destruction in parts of Maungdaw despite the emergency measures. Kaladan Press Network, drawing on information from local Rohingya sources, reported that Rohingya houses in Bomu Para were burned and alleged that police and Lon Htein personnel assisted or enabled Rakhine attackers. The same reporting described the shooting of a twelve-year-old Rohingya girl on 10 June. These individual allegations emerged under extremely difficult conditions and cannot all now be independently reconstructed. They are therefore best preserved as contemporaneous Rohingya testimony. Their broader significance is strengthened by later investigations from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documenting shootings, destruction of Muslim property, discriminatory arrests and instances in which members of the security forces allegedly cooperated with Rakhine civilians.
The deteriorating security situation also affected the corridor between Maungdaw and Buthidaung. Contemporary Rohingya reporting stated that two Rohingya youths were shot dead at approximately 8 p.m. on 10 June while sitting beside the Maungdaw–Buthidaung highway. The surviving documentation does not provide enough independently corroborated detail to reconstruct every circumstance surrounding their deaths, and the incident should consequently remain attributed to the contemporary Rohingya source. Its geographical importance is nevertheless clear: reports of lethal violence were no longer confined to central Maungdaw, but were emerging along the route connecting the two principal Rohingya-populated townships of northern Arakan.
By 11 June, reports from Maungdaw became increasingly specific, identifying individual victims as well as particular wards and village tracts. Kaladan Press Network reported the death of Jamila, aged 28, daughter of Sarfaraz, from Shwe Zar. According to the report, Jamila had travelled to stay with relatives before the violence because she needed a photograph connected with her marriage application and had subsequently been unable to return home. The source alleged that police shot her at approximately 10 a.m. on 11 June while she was moving between relatives' houses with three brothers. Her reported death illustrates an aspect of June 2012 that is easily obscured when the events are described simply as “communal rioting”: Rohingya civilians who had taken no part in the original confrontation could nevertheless become victims while attempting ordinary movement within their own communities.
The same contemporary Rohingya reporting described an especially serious incident in Ward No. 3 of Maungdaw. According to testimony collected by Kaladan Press, police accompanied by Rakhine civilians instructed Rohingya residents to leave the area and allegedly warned that their safety could not otherwise be guaranteed. Some residents reportedly departed while others remained. The source alleged that those who remained were subsequently attacked and that ten Rohingya villagers were killed. Their bodies were reportedly placed temporarily near the Myoma cinema before later being removed by truck. Independent investigators were not present to verify the incident as it occurred, so both the number of victims and the precise circumstances must remain attributed to the witnesses who reported them. Nevertheless, later human-rights documentation contains recurring accounts of Rohingya disappearing following security operations and families being unable to establish what had happened to detained or missing relatives.
Shwe Zar, one of the major Rohingya-populated areas near Maungdaw, was also reported to have experienced continuing insecurity. Kaladan Press stated that police fired toward Shwe Zar South on the evening of 11 June, causing Rohingya residents to flee their homes. The same source alleged looting of Rohingya property and reported movements of Rakhine youths by truck in the surrounding area. These geographically specific accounts are significant because they illustrate how Rohingya witnesses experienced the spreading crisis: not as a single continuing confrontation in Maungdaw town, but as a series of threats affecting different wards, village tracts and connecting roads.
The surviving record for Buthidaung during 10–11 June remains considerably thinner than that for Maungdaw. This documentary imbalance should not be overcome by speculation. Government and contemporary reporting nevertheless confirm heightened security and curfew measures affecting the area as authorities attempted to prevent further expansion of the violence. Subsequent human-rights investigations documented arrests and security operations affecting Rohingya in Buthidaung as well as Maungdaw and other parts of northern Arakan. The available evidence therefore places Buthidaung firmly within the expanding crisis even though it does not permit the same neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood reconstruction possible for Maungdaw.
At the same time, the possibility of escaping northern Arakan was beginning to close. The Equal Rights Trust recorded that the first boat carrying Rohingya fleeing the violence reached Bangladesh on 11 June and was pushed back. Bangladesh subsequently strengthened its border and maritime restrictions against Rohingya attempting to cross the Naf River. For communities living close to the frontier, this was a critical development. Rohingya families facing violence or fearing security operations could not assume that crossing into Bangladesh would provide refuge. The border was becoming another barrier surrounding a population whose movement inside Myanmar was already severely restricted.
By the end of 11 June, the geography of danger had therefore expanded considerably. Rohingya organisations were reporting a mounting death toll; individual victims were being identified in places such as Shwe Zar; serious allegations were emerging from Maungdaw's residential wards; violence had been reported along the Maungdaw–Buthidaung corridor; and people attempting to escape toward Bangladesh were beginning to encounter closed borders. The following day and the period immediately afterward would reveal another dimension of the crisis: village-by-village arrests, searches and security operations across Rohingya-populated areas of northern Arakan.
Section 3. 12 June: From Local Violence to Village-by-Village Security Operations
By 12 June, the character of the crisis in northern Arakan was changing again. The large public confrontations that had marked the beginning of the violence were increasingly giving way to searches, arrests and security operations inside Rohingya-populated areas. Human Rights Watch subsequently identified the period beginning around 12 June and continuing through the following days as one in which consistent reports emerged of mass arrests in Maungdaw town and villages south of Maungdaw. Rohingya witnesses described police, Lon Htein, NaSaKa and army personnel entering neighbourhoods and villages and taking residents away. The expansion of these operations meant that Rohingya who had survived the first days of violence now faced another danger: arrest or disappearance during operations conducted under the authority of the state of emergency.
According to testimony later collected by Human Rights Watch, some security operations were conducted using lists containing the names of Rohingya suspected of involvement in the disturbances of 8–10 June. In other locations, witnesses described arrests occurring from house to house. Rohingya men and boys were particularly vulnerable because security personnel could accuse them of having participated in earlier demonstrations or violence. Families therefore began hiding male relatives or sending them away when security forces approached. Witnesses described people concealing themselves in fields, agricultural land and embankments rather than remaining inside their homes where they could easily be found.
The existence of arrests following serious violence was not in itself extraordinary; authorities had a responsibility to investigate killings, arson and attacks committed during the preceding days. The central problem was the manner in which the operations were reportedly conducted. Human Rights Watch documented allegations of arbitrary detention, beatings, extortion and disappearances. Some families reported being asked to provide money for the release of detained relatives. Others said that relatives were taken away without information about where they were being held. In a population already denied effective citizenship protections, detention without transparent procedures produced profound fear that arrest could lead to prolonged disappearance rather than an ordinary criminal investigation.
Particularly significant were accounts indicating that armed Rakhine civilians sometimes accompanied security forces during operations in Rohingya areas. Human Rights Watch documented cases in which Rakhine men moved alongside police or other security personnel into Rohingya villages. Such evidence did not establish that every security operation involved civilian attackers, nor that every state officer acted in the same way. It did, however, provide independent support for one of the most serious allegations already appearing in contemporary Rohingya accounts: in some locations, the line separating communal attackers from the authorities responsible for protecting civilians had become dangerously blurred.
The impact extended far beyond those actually detained. When reports circulated that security forces were moving from settlement to settlement, entire communities changed their behaviour. Men avoided roads and markets. Families attempted to determine whether their names appeared on arrest lists. Some people slept outside their houses or hid in nearby fields. Movement between villages became increasingly difficult, while normal economic activity was disrupted. The ordinary mechanisms through which rural Rohingya communities obtained food, medicine and income were therefore being damaged at the same time that insecurity was increasing.
For Rohingya, these restrictions operated on top of an already extensive system of state control. Long before June 2012, Rohingya in northern Arakan had faced severe restrictions on movement and had lived under the surveillance of NaSaKa, the border security force operating particularly in Maungdaw and Buthidaung. Travel between locations could require official permission; marriage, family life and economic activity were subject to intrusive regulation; and checkpoints formed part of everyday existence. Emergency measures imposed in June therefore did not descend upon a population that had previously enjoyed equal freedom of movement. They intensified an existing structure of restriction.
The consequences were especially severe for villages dependent on roads connecting Maungdaw, Buthidaung and the surrounding countryside. A Rohingya resident who remained at home could fear arrest, attack or the burning of property. A person attempting to travel could encounter checkpoints, armed security personnel or hostile groups. Movement toward the Bangladesh border offered no guaranteed escape because Bangladesh was already turning Rohingya boats away. The geography of northern Arakan was consequently becoming a system of confinement: villages were isolated from one another, roads were dangerous, official restrictions limited movement and the international border was closing.
Information itself became difficult to obtain. Restrictions on access prevented journalists and independent observers from freely investigating many affected locations. Telephone connections and local communications were unreliable, while frightened residents depended heavily on information passed between relatives and villages. This helps explain why casualty estimates varied so dramatically and why some incidents survive primarily through Rohingya community documentation rather than independent contemporary reporting. Absence from the international press cannot automatically be treated as evidence that an incident did not occur, but neither should every uncorroborated report be converted into established fact. Preserving named testimony while distinguishing it from independently corroborated evidence is therefore essential to reconstructing these days responsibly.
By 12 June, the crisis had thus moved considerably beyond the confrontation that had begun in Maungdaw four days earlier. Rohingya communities across northern Arakan were facing a combination of communal violence, emergency restrictions, shootings, arrests, displacement and increasingly intrusive security operations. Rakhine civilians had also suffered killings, destruction and displacement during the June violence, but the position of the two populations was not structurally equal. The Rohingya entered the crisis without recognized citizenship, under longstanding restrictions on movement and under the authority of security institutions that independent investigations would subsequently accuse of serious abuses against them.
For the Rohingya historical record, 9–12 June 2012 therefore represents more than the geographical spread of the violence. It marks a transformation in the nature of the crisis. What had erupted publicly in Maungdaw on 8 June moved into neighbourhoods, village tracts, roads and rural communities. By the end of this period, Rohingya civilians increasingly feared not only attacks by hostile civilians but also arrest, shooting or disappearance at the hands of institutions officially deployed to restore security.
This transformation would have consequences far beyond northern Arakan. While Maungdaw and Buthidaung were entering a period of arrests, restrictions and security operations, another centre of violence was developing in the Arakan State capital. Akyab/Sittwe was burning, Muslim and Rohingya neighbourhoods were being destroyed, and large populations were being driven from areas in which they had lived for generations. The events there would permanently alter the demographic geography of the city and create the foundations of the system of segregation that followed.
Continue reading → Part 13, Chapter 5 — June 2012: Akyab/Sittwe Burns