Part 17. The 2015 Election, Rohingya Political Exclusion and the Beginnings of Armed Mobilisation in Arakan
Chapter 3. The November 2015 Election and Rohingya Responses
On 8 November 2015, Myanmar voted in an election widely celebrated as a breakthrough against military-backed rule. For Rohingya, the day carried a different meaning. Decisions about the country’s future proceeded while most of the community stood outside the electoral process. The national celebrations could not erase that exclusion.
Rohingya responses were neither uniform nor politically indifferent. Some hoped that the defeat of the governing party would create an opportunity for freedom. Others questioned whether an opposition that had failed to defend them would act differently after victory. Organisations abroad demanded that international recognition of the election address the people denied a place within it. These responses belong at the centre of the election’s history.
Election Day Beyond the Polling Stations
The European Union’s observers described election day as generally peaceful and recorded an official turnout of approximately 69 per cent. Their assessments of voting inside the polling stations were overwhelmingly positive. Those findings describe the experience of participation; they cannot account for the political wishes of people excluded before the stations opened.
Around Sittwe, the difference was stark. Reuters reported that, according to Rakhine election commission chairman Aung Myat, only about 150 people were eligible to vote among nearly 100,000 Muslim residents of twenty displacement camps. This was a contemporary estimate for those camps, rather than a figure for all Rohingya in Arakan.
The same reporting preserved the words of Abdul Shakur, a Rohingya farmer living in Ohn Daw Gyi. He had participated in earlier elections, but now questioned whether his children could live freely in their own country. His concern placed the election within the future of a family, rather than the success of a national electoral exercise.
For the excluded population, election day offered no equivalent opportunity to register dissatisfaction through a ballot. Their absence from the queues did not signify consent to the conditions under which they lived.
A Kaman Resident’s Refusal in Solidarity
Reuters also interviewed Soe Hlaing, a forty-four-year-old Kaman Muslim in Ohn Daw Gyi who possessed a citizenship document allowing him to vote. He said that he would refuse to exercise that right while his Rohingya neighbours were excluded.
His identity matters. He was Kaman, not Rohingya, and his proposed refusal was an individual act of solidarity rather than evidence of an organised Rohingya electoral boycott. His position challenged a system that permitted a few camp residents to participate while denying that opportunity to almost everyone around them.
The account records a political response from within the displaced community itself. Eligibility did not oblige him to regard the election as acceptable. He judged participation against the treatment of his neighbours.
Rohingya Protest Before the Vote
Outside Myanmar, Rohingya organisations made their objections visible before election day. On 5 November, more than one hundred people demonstrated outside the British Foreign Office in London. Kaladan Press reported that the organisers included the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, Restless Beings, the Burmese Muslim Association UK, Bradford Rohingya Community UK and Burma Campaign UK.
The demonstration demanded British support for a United Nations commission of inquiry into possible genocide against Rohingya. It also challenged international assistance to institutions implementing discriminatory policies.
BROUK president Tun Khin questioned British funding for the Union Election Commission and argued that international support could implicate donors in discrimination. Restless Beings director Mabrur Ahmed demanded action in response to mounting evidence of persecution, while other speakers called for investigation rather than further expressions of concern.
These demands went beyond access to one election. The demonstrators insisted that diplomatic enthusiasm for reform must not displace the obligation to investigate the destruction of Rohingya rights and protect the community. Their mobilisation also demonstrates that political exclusion at home did not silence Rohingya political action.
The National Result and a Parliament Without Muslims
The National League for Democracy won an overwhelming national victory. The EU mission’s final report recorded 255 elected seats in the Lower House and 135 in the Upper House. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won thirty and eleven respectively.
Yet the same report recorded that none of the twenty-eight Muslim candidates approved to contest the election won a seat. The resulting national Parliament had no Muslim member, which the mission described as the first such outcome since independence.
The absence of Muslim members concerned a population wider than the Rohingya. For Rohingya, however, it meant that the new parliamentary order emerged without members of their community—and without a Muslim representative who might challenge the assumption that the country’s political future could be discussed in their absence.
The defeat of the governing party was real. So was the exclusion built into the electorate and the resulting institutions. A Rohingya account of the election must preserve both facts without allowing the first to conceal the second.
Arakan’s Result Differed from the National Landslide
The NLD’s national success did not produce the same political landscape in Arakan. The Arakan National Party won twelve Lower House seats and ten Upper House seats, as well as twenty-two seats in the state legislature. Contemporary reporting by Burma News International documented this strong regional result.
Human Rights Watch subsequently examined how ANP leaders had sought to secure state and national seats and strengthen their claim to the state’s chief ministership. Its account also documented party chairman Aye Maung’s pre-election rhetoric portraying Muslims as a threat to Rakhine survival.
For Rohingya, a change in the leading national party therefore did not remove the strength of political forces hostile to their belonging in Arakan. The community’s future would be affected by a regional electoral outcome from which most Rohingya had been excluded.
That result could establish who won among the permitted voters. It could not establish Rohingya acceptance of the policies those victorious politicians advocated.
Hope Among People Denied a Vote
Some Rohingya nevertheless hoped that the NLD victory would open a path out of their circumstances. In reporting published on 13 November, Reuters interviewed Noor Bagum, a twenty-eight-year-old mother of five who had wanted to vote for the NLD. She hoped for even a modest improvement. Another camp resident, Mohammed Solim, expressed hope that the victory would bring freedom.
These accounts should be understood as the views of the people interviewed, rather than a mandate issued by the whole community. Their importance lies in the combination of exclusion and continuing political expectation. People prevented from choosing a government still hoped that a new government might recognise their humanity and rights.
Such hope did not absolve the NLD of its silence. It placed a demand upon the victorious party: the promise of change had to reach those who were denied the means to help bring it about.
ARNO’s Response: Victory Alone Was Insufficient
On 12 November, Anadolu Agency interviewed Nurul Islam, chairman of the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation. He acknowledged the possibility of better government after a long period of repression, but questioned whether an NLD victory could deliver democratic government under the existing military constitution.
He also criticised Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to oppose Rohingya exclusion and her silence during the community’s persecution. His assessment allowed for the possibility that a new political atmosphere might provide some relief, while insisting that restoration of ethnic rights and full citizenship remained unproven.
The same report interviewed Dr Hla Myint of the Sydney Rohingya Intellectual Group. He argued that both the NLD and USDP had disregarded Rohingya fundamental rights and warned that the community could again become victims of competition for power between political and military leaders.
These were contemporary Rohingya assessments, made as the election results emerged. They show that scepticism was already present alongside hope. Rohingya observers were asking whether the distribution of power would change their position, rather than assuming that an opposition victory automatically meant liberation.
International Celebration and Its Limits
On 12 November, the United Nations Secretary-General congratulated Myanmar’s people on their participation and commended the institutions involved in conducting the election. The statement also acknowledged that minority voters, particularly Rohingya, had been denied participation and that some candidates had been disqualified.
Freedom House’s election-day statement similarly described the vote as a significant advance while warning that exclusion seriously undermined claims that it was wholly free and fair.
For Rohingya, acknowledgement was necessary, but insufficient. Exclusion could not be treated as a regrettable detail appended to a successful election. It concerned who was allowed to constitute the political community whose wishes the election claimed to express.
The community’s protests and assessments demanded a standard that international celebrations often left unresolved: political progress must include the rights of those deliberately kept outside the process.
The Rohingya Meaning of November 2015
The election produced a decisive national result, but it provided no measure of Rohingya political consent. Their responses survived through interviews, demonstrations and organisational statements rather than through the ballot count.
Those records reveal people seeking freedom, expressing solidarity, challenging discriminatory institutions and questioning the promises attached to an opposition victory. They also reveal a community refusing to accept that its exclusion could be made legitimate by the enthusiasm of others.
For Rohingya, the essential question after 8 November was whether political change would restore their place in the country. Until that happened, national victory celebrations could not stand as evidence of their own freedom.