Part III — Ne Win's Coup and the Beginning of Military Rule
The Progressive Loss of Rohingya Rights
For the Rohingya, the military coup of 2 March 1962 represents one of the decisive turning points in the long historical process that eventually led to their exclusion, statelessness and genocide. General Ne Win's seizure of power did not immediately remove every Rohingya right through a single decree. The transformation was gradual. Institutions through which Rohingya had participated in Burma's political and administrative life were dismantled one after another, while the community increasingly came under military, immigration and security control.
This distinction is fundamental to the Rohingya perspective. Before 1962, Rohingya were not a population completely outside Burma's political system. Members of the community voted, contested national elections, entered parliament, served in government and worked in public institutions and the security services. Organizations using the Rohingya name operated publicly, Rohingya-language broadcasting existed, and the central government negotiated directly with Rohingya political leaders concerning the administration and security of northern Arakan.
The later portrayal of the Rohingya as foreigners without a legitimate place in Burma was therefore not simply an unchanged policy inherited from independence. It developed through a historical process. From the Rohingya perspective, the Ne Win period marks the beginning of a profound reversal from political participation and limited institutional recognition toward progressive exclusion.
From Parliament to Military Rule
During the parliamentary period, Muslim representatives from northern Arakan participated repeatedly in Burma's constitutional political system. Historical accounts identify Sultan Ahmed and Abdul Gaffar as members of the Constituent Assembly, while Rohingya and Muslim representatives subsequently contested national elections throughout the 1950s and in 1960.
Among figures associated with parliamentary representation were Sultan Ahmed, Abdul Gaffar, Abul Bashar, Abul Khair, Rashid Ahmed, Sultan Mahmud, Abdus Suban, Azhar Miah, U Po Khine/Nasir Uddin and Zohora Begum, also known as Daw Aye Nyunt. The precise political and ethnic self-identification of every individual must be considered according to the contemporary evidence, but Rohingya historical sources consistently preserve these figures as representatives of the Muslim/Rohingya population of northern Arakan.
Their participation extended beyond membership of parliament. Sultan Ahmed served as a parliamentary secretary associated with minority affairs. Rohingya historical sources also record Abdul Gaffar and Abul Bashar as parliamentary secretaries. Most prominently, Sultan Mahmud, elected from Buthidaung, entered Prime Minister U Nu's government and served as Minister of Health.
This record is highly significant to the later genocide history. Only decades before the Rohingya would increasingly be portrayed by state authorities as foreign “Bengalis,” representatives of the community were participating within Burma's legislature, government and political institutions.
Rohingya in Government, Administration and the Police
Political representation formed only one part of Rohingya participation in the state. Rohingya historical sources also document Muslims from northern Arakan working within government administration, education, local institutions and the police.
Rohingya accounts identify Police Inspector Abul Qassim and U Mir Ahmed among Muslim officers who assisted government operations against the Mujahid insurgency during the 1950s. Community historical sources state that they received government recognition for their service. These individual details derive principally from Rohingya historical accounts and should be understood as such where original personnel records have not yet been located.
The wider pattern is important. Rohingya were not treated exclusively as foreigners requiring immigration control. Members of the community served within institutions responsible for administering and protecting the state itself.
During the Mayu Frontier Administration, a locally recruited security force known as the Mayu Ray also drew substantially upon Muslims of northern Arakan. For Rohingya historical memory, this period represented a striking contrast with later decades: local Muslims could participate in maintaining public order in their own region rather than encounter the state primarily through military and immigration enforcement.
Rights That Later Generations Would Lose
The parliamentary period should not be romanticized. Discrimination existed, communal distrust remained strong, the Mujahid insurgency complicated relations with the government, and questions concerning citizenship, migration and the political future of Arakan were already contested.
Nevertheless, Rohingya exercised political and civic rights that later generations would progressively lose. They voted, stood for election, served in parliament, held government positions and worked within public institutions. Organizations using the Rohingya name operated publicly, and Rohingya-language programmes were transmitted through the state broadcasting system.
These were not the characteristics of a population completely excluded from Burma's national life.
The establishment of the Mayu Frontier Administration in 1961, covering Maungdaw, Buthidaung and western Rathedaung, further demonstrated this political environment. It was not an independent Rohingya state or full autonomy. It was a special centrally administered frontier arrangement. Nevertheless, it represented the most substantial territorial-administrative accommodation achieved by the Muslim population of northern Arakan during parliamentary Burma.
Rakhine Nationalist Opposition to the Mayu Arrangement
From the Rohingya perspective, the Mayu Frontier Administration was an important protection gained after years of insecurity, armed conflict and political negotiation. Many Rohingya regarded direct administration from Rangoon as a safeguard against being placed under political structures dominated by Rakhine nationalist interests.
Sections of Rakhine nationalism viewed the same arrangement very differently. Rakhine political leaders had long sought recognition of an Arakan State encompassing the region. Separating the heavily Muslim northern frontier from ordinary Arakan administration conflicted with this territorial objective. The Mayu arrangement therefore became part of a much deeper struggle over who would govern northern Arakan and how its Muslim majority would be politically represented.
Rohingya historical memory interprets this opposition through the unresolved hostility inherited from the communal catastrophe of 1942 and earlier disputes over territory and political power in Arakan. The massacres had left both Rohingya and Rakhine communities with memories of displacement and lost territory. For Rohingya, Mayu represented security after that catastrophe; for sections of Rakhine nationalism, separate administration of the north represented an unacceptable division of Arakan.
Anti-Rohingya Narratives and the Central Burmese State
Rohingya historical accounts maintain that sections of the Rakhine nationalist and political establishment repeatedly carried hostile representations of the Rohingya to central Burmese authorities. According to this perspective, Rohingya were portrayed as recent immigrants, “Bengalis,” demographic intruders, separatists or a population whose loyalty to Burma should be questioned.
The large Muslim majority in Maungdaw and Buthidaung became particularly important to these arguments. Rohingya maintain that opponents frequently portrayed this demographic concentration as evidence of continuing migration from Bengal while ignoring two important elements of history: the long-established Muslim population of northern Arakan and the internal displacement of Muslims from central Arakan toward Maungdaw and Buthidaung during the massacres of 1942.
From the Rohingya perspective, repeated allegations about illegal immigration and demographic expansion fed suspicion among central Burmese political and military authorities. What had originally been a regional struggle over territory, identity and political power increasingly became connected with the national questions of immigration, border security and who qualified as an indigenous people of Burma.
Rohingya historical narratives frequently describe this process in stronger terms, arguing that Rakhine nationalist actors deliberately supplied Burmese leaders with misinformation about the Rohingya and continually encouraged the central authorities to act against them. The precise role of particular individuals and organizations must be established period by period from documentary evidence. It would therefore be inaccurate to describe all Rakhine people or all Rakhine political movements as participants in one continuous conspiracy. Nevertheless, the development and transmission of narratives portraying Rohingya as foreign “Bengalis” became an increasingly powerful factor in their later exclusion.
From Communal Hostility to State Power
The military coup made this development considerably more dangerous. Under parliamentary government, Rohingya MPs and political organizations could respond to accusations through elections, parliament and direct negotiation with ministers. After Ne Win dissolved parliament, those democratic mechanisms disappeared.
The political balance therefore changed fundamentally. Narratives questioning Rohingya identity and belonging now operated within a centralized military state increasingly concerned with borders, immigration, national races and internal security. For Rohingya historical interpretation, this represents a critical transition: anti-Rohingya communal and nationalist hostility increasingly converged with the coercive power of the central state.
This does not mean that Ne Win's government acted only because of Rakhine nationalist pressure. The military regime pursued authoritarian, assimilationist and security policies against numerous ethnic minorities throughout Burma. But in northern Arakan, existing hostility toward Rohingya could increasingly interact with the military state's own concerns about ethnicity, borders and immigration. The consequences would eventually be devastating.
2 March 1962: The Political Door Closes
General Ne Win's coup overthrew Prime Minister U Nu's elected government, dissolved parliament and established the Revolutionary Council. For the Rohingya, the institutions through which their representatives had argued for recognition, security and administrative protection disappeared.
There was no longer a functioning parliament in which a Rohingya MP could challenge government policy. There was no elected cabinet in which a politician such as Sultan Mahmud could serve as minister. Rohingya organizations lost the political environment through which they had negotiated directly with the central authorities.
The coup therefore did more than replace one government with another. It removed the principal democratic mechanisms through which Rohingya had defended their position within Burma.
Exclusion Was Progressive, Not Immediate
It would nevertheless be historically inaccurate to claim that Ne Win declared all Rohingya stateless immediately after the coup. The transition was progressive. The Mayu Frontier Administration initially survived and continued for almost two more years. Rohingya-language broadcasting also continued temporarily. Some Rohingya remained within state institutions.
This gradual transition is important because it reveals how exclusion developed. Rohingya did not move in a single day from political participation to the extreme statelessness experienced by later generations. Their political, administrative, cultural and legal space was progressively narrowed.
From a Rohingya perspective, this gradual destruction of institutional protection is an important element of what many describe as a slow genocidal process.
Abolition of the Mayu Frontier Administration
One of the first major reversals came in February 1964, when the Revolutionary Council abolished the Mayu Frontier Administration and transferred the region to the Ministry of Home Affairs. For Rohingya, this represented much more than an administrative reorganization.
The Mayu arrangement had kept Maungdaw, Buthidaung and western Rathedaung under separate central administration. Muslim leaders had supported this structure partly because they feared incorporation into political arrangements dominated by Rakhine nationalist interests. Its abolition removed one of the clearest institutional achievements of Rohingya constitutional politics.
The change also marked a wider transformation. The question of northern Arakan was increasingly moving away from political negotiation with elected Rohingya representatives and toward centralized military, administrative and security control.
The Disappearance of Rohingya-Language Broadcasting
The contraction continued after Mayu's abolition. Rohingya-language broadcasting through the Burma Broadcasting Service survived for a period but was reportedly discontinued in 1965. The sequence was striking. In 1962, parliamentary government disappeared. In 1964, the Mayu Frontier Administration disappeared. By 1965, Rohingya-language state broadcasting had disappeared.
None of these developments alone created the later system of statelessness. Taken together, however, they demonstrate the progressive disappearance of institutions through which Rohingya identity and political participation had previously received public expression.
Rohingya Removed From Public Service
The erosion extended into government employment.
Human Rights Watch's historical research records that after the military takeover it became increasingly difficult for Rohingya to enter the civil service. Rohingya already employed by the state faced transfers and other pressures that led many to resign, while Rohingya historical literature records dismissals, forced retirement and the removal or transfer of Muslim police and officials.
Individual community accounts require verification where original personnel files are unavailable, but the broader pattern is supported independently: access to state employment progressively contracted as Rohingya citizenship and political status became increasingly insecure.
The contrast was profound. A community that had produced parliamentarians, parliamentary secretaries, a cabinet minister, police officers and other public servants was progressively losing access to the same institutions.
From Citizens With Representatives to a Security Population
Under parliamentary government, Rohingya could approach the state politically. They elected representatives who could speak in parliament, communicate with ministries and negotiate with the prime minister. Under military rule, northern Arakan increasingly became treated as a security and immigration frontier.
The border with East Pakistan acquired particular importance. Colonial-era movement between Bengal and Arakan, refugee movements created by the violence of 1942 and continuing cross-border mobility were increasingly interpreted through the framework of international immigration.
This shift had enormous consequences. Once the Rohingya question was reframed primarily as an immigration problem, the historical presence of the community could itself be challenged. People who had previously exercised political rights could increasingly be required to prove that they were not foreigners.
From Rohingya to “Bengali”
The struggle over terminology became part of this transformation. During the parliamentary period, senior officials had publicly used the name Rohingya. Organizations bearing the name operated openly, politicians represented the community and Rohingya-language broadcasting existed.
Under military rule, official recognition progressively contracted. The state increasingly emphasized categories of officially recognized national ethnic groups, while Rohingya were progressively portrayed as originating from neighbouring Bengal.
This was not merely a dispute over a name. Calling the population “Bengali” carried a political implication: that its true homeland lay outside Burma. Once that proposition became embedded within state policy, rights previously exercised by Rohingya could increasingly be portrayed not as rights belonging to citizens but as privileges wrongly obtained by foreigners.
Why This Matters to the Genocide History
The significance of Ne Win's period to the history of Rohingya genocide lies in this progressive transformation. The state did not begin with the mass destruction witnessed in 2017. First, the political environment through which Rohingya could defend their position was dismantled.
Parliamentary representation disappeared. Government participation contracted. The Mayu Frontier Administration was abolished. Rohingya-language broadcasting ended. Access to the civil service and security institutions narrowed.
And narratives portraying the community as foreign increasingly entered the language through which the state understood northern Arakan. From the Rohingya perspective, these developments formed an important stage in a slow process of political, institutional and legal destruction that would eventually make far more severe persecution possible.
This is a historical interpretation rather than a legal finding that genocide had already been established in the 1960s. But the distinction does not diminish its significance. A population deprived of representation and increasingly portrayed as foreign was becoming progressively less able to defend itself against the power of the state.
Toward Operation Nagamin
During the 1970s, this transformation moved closer to mass coercion. The 1974 constitutional order incorporated the former Mayu region into the newly established Arakan State. The separate administrative position negotiated during parliamentary Burma was not restored.
Immigration documentation became increasingly important, while Rohingya faced growing difficulty securing recognition equivalent to that available to accepted citizens. The state's relationship with the community increasingly centred upon determining who belonged and who could be classified as an illegal immigrant.
Then came 1978. Under Operation Nagamin - Dragon King, military and immigration authorities launched a large-scale citizenship and immigration scrutiny operation. For the Rohingya, the institutional exclusion that had developed after 1962 was about to produce a catastrophic mass refugee crisis.
More than 200,000 people would flee toward Bangladesh. The next part examines Operation Nagamin as a crucial stage in the progression from political exclusion and denial toward large-scale state operations against the Rohingya population.
Continue reading → Part IV: Operation Nagamin (Dragon King), 1978