Political Mobilization and the Institutionalization of Separation, June–September 2012

Summary

Following the June 2012 violence, the displacement of Rohingya increasingly developed into an institutionalized system of separation. President Thein Sein proposed placing Rohingya under UNHCR administration or resettling them abroad, while Rakhine nationalist politicians, organizations and some Buddhist monastic networks promoted physical, social and economic separation. Movement restrictions, opposition to Rohingya return, humanitarian dependency and the confinement of Muslim communities such as Aung Mingalar increasingly excluded Rohingya from ordinary urban and economic life. By September 2012, measures initially presented as responses to communal violence were developing into a more durable system of segregation.

Chapter 8. Political Mobilization and the Institutionalization of Separation, June–September 2012

Section 1. From Emergency Response to a Political Programme of Separation

The most consequential political development after the June 2012 violence was not simply the restoration of public order. Within weeks, the question facing Rohingya was changing from whether they would survive the immediate violence to whether they would be permitted to resume their lives within the communities from which they had been displaced. Political statements, administrative decisions and public campaigns increasingly presented physical separation between Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists not as a temporary emergency measure but as a desirable solution to Arakan's political future.

For Rohingya, this represented a profound danger. Thousands had fled because their neighbourhoods had burned or because remaining there was unsafe. In an ordinary emergency response, displacement would be followed by protection, reconstruction and voluntary return when conditions permitted. Instead, Rohingya increasingly encountered proposals that treated their displacement as an opportunity to remove them permanently from the social and geographic spaces they had occupied before June.

The most important signal came from the highest level of government. On 12 July 2012, President Thein Sein met the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres. According to the president's published account of the meeting, Thein Sein distinguished people he regarded as Myanmar's recognized ethnic nationalities from Rohingya whom he characterized as having entered the country illegally. He proposed that Rohingya could be placed in camps administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and suggested that those accepted by third countries could be sent abroad.

The statement had extraordinary significance for Rohingya. The president of Myanmar was addressing a population that had lived for generations in Arakan not principally as internally displaced citizens or long-established inhabitants requiring protection, but as people who might be placed indefinitely under an international refugee agency or removed to other countries. From the Rohingya perspective, this was a continuation of the state's longstanding denial of their belonging: after decades in which citizenship policy had progressively stripped Rohingya of legal recognition, the violence of 2012 was now followed by a proposal that effectively imagined their future outside Myanmar.

UNHCR did not accept the proposal as a solution. Rohingya displaced within Myanmar were not foreign refugees who could simply be transferred into UNHCR refugee camps inside their own country, and international standards governing internal displacement emphasize voluntary return, freedom of movement and protection against arbitrary confinement. Nevertheless, Thein Sein's statement mattered politically even though the proposal was not implemented in the precise form described. It publicly legitimized the idea that the Rohingya population itself, rather than the violence and discrimination directed against it, constituted a problem that could be resolved through physical removal.

The language also reinforced a distinction central to Rohingya exclusion. By portraying Rohingya as illegal outsiders while promising to protect recognized national ethnic groups, the statement placed citizenship and belonging at the centre of the post-violence response. Rohingya rejected this characterization. Their organizations emphasized their historical roots in Arakan and argued that the state was using the disputed “illegal immigrant” narrative to justify exclusion from a homeland in which Rohingya communities had existed long before Myanmar's modern citizenship regime.

The political significance extended beyond one presidential statement. In Arakan State itself, influential Rakhine political figures were openly discussing policies designed to separate Rohingya from the Buddhist population. Aye Maung, a leading figure in the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), advocated what he described as a special or exclusive policy toward the Rohingya. Human Rights Watch later cited his statement that a distinct policy was needed for “these people” in order to defend the region against what he characterized as repeated territorial intrusion. Such language framed the Rohingya not as neighbours displaced by violence but as a demographic and territorial threat.

This framing was especially consequential because the RNDP was not merely an informal nationalist association. It was an important Rakhine political party with elected representation and influence within the state. Its leaders could therefore translate popular nationalist demands into political pressure on administrators and the central government. Calls for separation emerging from such figures carried substantially greater institutional weight than isolated expressions of communal hostility.

For Rohingya, the territorial language used by nationalist politicians echoed a much older pattern. Rohingya population concentrations in northern Arakan had repeatedly been portrayed by nationalist movements as evidence of foreign encroachment rather than as indigenous or long-established communities. In 2012, this narrative gave political meaning to displacement. If Rohingya were defined as outsiders occupying territory, then removing them from mixed towns and neighbourhoods could be presented not as dispossession but as the restoration or defence of Rakhine space.

The transformation was already visible in Akyab/Sittwe. Rohingya and other Muslims who had fled destroyed neighbourhoods were increasingly concentrated outside central areas, while the surviving Muslim population in Aung Mingalar faced severe restrictions on movement. Human Rights Watch documented Rohingya residents effectively trapped within the neighbourhood, unable to move freely through a city in which Muslims had previously participated in markets, employment and ordinary urban life. What had begun as an emergency security arrangement was beginning to alter who could inhabit and move through the capital.

This development was not simply the spontaneous consequence of mutual fear. Human Rights Watch later reported that government officials told diplomats and humanitarian representatives that Muslim and Rakhine communities might have to remain separated for at least three years to allow tensions to subside. Officials also reportedly connected long-term separation with plans for the economic and urban development of Akyab/Sittwe. Such discussions suggested that segregation was beginning to enter administrative planning rather than remaining an improvised response to immediate violence.

From the Rohingya perspective, this raised an obvious question: if separation was temporary, what concrete programme existed for return? Destroyed neighbourhoods could have been reconstructed. Security forces could have protected returning residents. Property claims could have been documented and adjudicated. Movement between communities could gradually have been restored. Yet the emerging policies moved in the opposite direction. Rohingya movement became more restricted, displaced populations became increasingly concentrated in designated locations, and political voices calling for separation grew stronger.

The situation was especially dangerous because the language of security could make discriminatory measures appear neutral. Authorities could argue that preventing Rohingya from entering particular areas protected them from hostile crowds. In the immediate aftermath of violence, temporary separation might indeed prevent further killings. But protection and confinement are not the same policy. The crucial test was whether restrictions were proportionate, temporary and directed toward restoring normal civilian life—or whether they were being used to establish a new permanent geography in which Rohingya were excluded from towns, markets and neighbourhoods.

Evidence from the following months increasingly supported Rohingya fears that the second process was taking place. Human Rights Watch later documented that displaced Rakhine populations were generally able to return or resettle, while Rohingya confinement became progressively entrenched. Checkpoints, permission requirements and physical barriers increasingly regulated Rohingya movement. The displaced were not simply waiting for security conditions to improve; a system was developing around them that would make return increasingly difficult.

It is important not to project the fully developed camp and confinement system of later years backward onto June or July 2012. The system evolved over time. In the first months after the violence, government responses contained elements of emergency relief, public-order management and genuine concern about renewed communal attacks. But alongside those measures, a political idea was gaining legitimacy: Rakhine and Rohingya should no longer share the same social and geographic space.

For Rohingya, that idea represented a decisive escalation of earlier exclusion. The 1982 citizenship regime had progressively weakened their legal membership in Myanmar. Movement restrictions and NaSaKa controls had limited their freedom in northern Arakan. After June 2012, exclusion began to acquire a new physical dimension. Rohingya were increasingly being removed from, or prevented from returning to, spaces they had previously shared with other communities.

Thein Sein's July proposal therefore belongs in the historical record not because UNHCR implemented it—it did not—but because it revealed the direction in which official thinking could move. A population displaced by violence was being discussed as a population that might be permanently camped or transferred abroad. Rakhine nationalist politicians were simultaneously demanding special policies and physical separation. The convergence of these ideas created a political environment in which segregation could increasingly be presented as a solution rather than recognized as another violation of Rohingya rights.

During the following weeks, this politics of separation moved beyond government offices and party statements. Rakhine nationalist organizations, Buddhist monks and community networks began mobilizing ordinary society around social and economic exclusion, urging Buddhists not to trade with, assist or maintain ordinary relations with Rohingya and other Muslims. The result was a form of separation enforced not only through checkpoints and official restrictions, but also through markets, monasteries, community pressure and humanitarian access.

The movement toward separation after June 2012 was not driven by government policy alone. Rakhine political organizations, Buddhist monks, community associations and informal networks increasingly promoted the idea that ordinary social and economic relations between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims should end. For Rohingya, this development was particularly dangerous because it extended exclusion beyond formal government restrictions. Even where no police checkpoint prevented movement, community pressure could make markets, transport, employment and ordinary interaction inaccessible.

The Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) occupied an important position in this political environment. As an elected Rakhine political party, it possessed a legitimacy and public platform unavailable to informal nationalist groups. Its leaders frequently framed the Rohingya question in demographic, territorial and national-security terms, rejecting Rohingya claims to indigenous identity and describing the population instead as “Bengali” immigrants. This terminology was not merely a disagreement over naming. For Rohingya, rejecting the word Rohingya was part of rejecting their historical belonging in Arakan and consequently their claim to political and citizenship rights.

RNDP chairman Dr. Aye Maung became one of the prominent political voices advocating separation. Human Rights Watch documented his argument that a special or “exclusive” policy was necessary for Rohingya. He presented the issue through the language of protecting Arakan from what he characterized as territorial intrusion. Such arguments transformed communal fear into a political programme: if Rohingya were represented as an invading population rather than inhabitants of Arakan, measures excluding them from shared territory could be justified as defence rather than discrimination.

Other Rakhine political and community organizations adopted similar positions. Public statements and community discussions increasingly demanded that Rohingya and Rakhine populations be physically separated. Some proposals called for Muslim populations to be relocated away from Buddhist communities, while others opposed the return of displaced Muslims to neighbourhoods from which they had fled. The political effect was to make non-return appear increasingly acceptable. A family driven from its home by violence could consequently face not only the physical problem of rebuilding but organized opposition to its presence in the former neighbourhood.

Buddhist monks also became influential participants in the mobilization. Monasteries have historically occupied important social positions in Rakhine communities, and monks could reach audiences far beyond formal political organizations. During the months following the June violence, some monks and monastic organizations circulated statements encouraging Buddhists to distance themselves socially and economically from Rohingya and other Muslims.

One of the clearest examples documented by Human Rights Watch came from monks associated with influential Buddhist networks who distributed pamphlets advocating separation from Muslims. Monks were reported to have called on Rakhine Buddhists not to conduct business with Rohingya and other Muslims, not to sell them food and not to maintain ordinary social relationships with them. Such campaigns transformed political exclusion into a set of everyday instructions governing how one neighbour should treat another.

For Rohingya, an economic boycott could be devastating even without direct physical violence. Rohingya traders depended on access to markets; farmers needed places to sell produce; families needed to purchase food, medicine and household necessities; fishermen and labourers depended on commercial relationships outside their immediate communities. If Buddhist shopkeepers, transport providers and traders were pressured not to deal with Muslims, the result could be economic isolation even where formal government regulations remained unchanged.

The boycott movement also created pressure on Rakhine Buddhists who might otherwise have continued ordinary relations with Muslim neighbours. Community exclusion works partly through enforcement within the majority community itself. A trader willing to sell goods to Rohingya could be accused of betraying Rakhine interests; a Buddhist assisting displaced Muslims could face criticism or intimidation. In this way, nationalist mobilization could narrow the space available for coexistence by imposing social costs on people who resisted separation.

This distinction is important. The participation of monks in nationalist campaigns should not be transformed into an accusation against Buddhism or against all Buddhist monks. Buddhist religious figures did not act with one uniform political position, and individual monks elsewhere in Myanmar have at different times advocated peace or protected threatened Muslims. The historical issue in Arakan in 2012 concerns specific monastic organizations and monks who used their considerable social authority to support separation or economic exclusion.

Rohingya organisations viewed these campaigns as evidence that the post-June crisis was evolving from episodic communal violence into a broader programme of isolation. From their perspective, the danger no longer consisted only of being attacked by a crowd. Rohingya could survive an attack and still find themselves unable to buy food, enter a market, travel through a neighbouring area or return to a former home because political and community networks were mobilizing against ordinary coexistence.

Nationalist organizations also attempted to influence humanitarian assistance. Aid to displaced Rohingya became politically contentious, with some Rakhine activists accusing international organizations of favouring Muslims. Humanitarian agencies faced protests, hostility and pressure concerning whom they assisted. These accusations emerged despite the fact that international agencies were providing aid to displaced populations from both communities.

Opposition to humanitarian assistance had potentially life-threatening consequences because displaced Rohingya were increasingly dependent on outside supplies. Families who had lost homes, businesses and access to markets could not simply support themselves normally. Restrictions on movement compounded this dependency. When humanitarian organisations faced obstruction or community pressure, Rohingya access to food, shelter and healthcare could consequently become another arena of political conflict.

The hostility toward international agencies was connected to a wider nationalist narrative. Some Rakhine activists believed that international organizations were biased toward Rohingya and that international recognition of Rohingya suffering threatened Rakhine political interests. Rohingya organisations, by contrast, argued that international involvement was essential precisely because they could not rely on local institutions for equal protection. Humanitarian agencies thus found themselves operating between communities with profoundly different perceptions of their role.

The political campaign also centred on the name “Rohingya.” Rakhine nationalist organizations strongly rejected use of the term and insisted that the population be called “Bengali.” This linguistic struggle had direct political implications. “Rohingya” expressed a claim to historical belonging in Arakan; “Bengali,” as deployed by nationalist movements, implied foreign origin and eventual return to Bangladesh. Denying the name therefore reinforced arguments for segregation, exclusion from citizenship and removal.

For Rohingya, the campaign to erase their name and the campaign to separate them geographically were parts of the same process. If Rohingya could be represented publicly as recent foreigners, their exclusion from towns and villages could more easily be portrayed as legitimate. Conversely, recognition that Rohingya families had deep historical roots in Arakan would make proposals for their removal far harder to justify.

By the middle of 2012, therefore, separation was being reinforced simultaneously through political rhetoric, religious and community mobilization, economic boycotts and pressure against humanitarian engagement. None of these mechanisms required a central order directing every participant. Political leaders could articulate the ideology, monks and community organizations could spread it, local networks could enforce social pressure, and administrative restrictions could give physical form to the resulting separation.

The cumulative effect was particularly damaging because each mechanism strengthened the others. Movement restrictions made Rohingya more dependent on local markets; boycotts made those markets inaccessible. Destruction created humanitarian need; hostility toward aid agencies made assistance more difficult. Displacement removed Rohingya from neighbourhoods; nationalist demands against return helped make displacement permanent. Denial of Rohingya identity then provided an ideological justification for the entire structure.

This convergence explains why the months after June cannot be understood merely as a period in which two frightened communities voluntarily remained apart. Fear certainly existed among both Rohingya and Rakhine civilians, and many people genuinely feared renewed violence. But alongside that fear developed organized political and social pressure advocating a much deeper objective: a future in which Rohingya and Rakhine would no longer share the same economic, residential and civic space.

By late summer 2012, these ideas were increasingly reflected in everyday conditions on the ground. Rohingya movement remained restricted, displaced populations were unable to return to many former neighbourhoods, humanitarian access remained politically contested, and areas such as Aung Mingalar were becoming effectively enclosed.

What had begun as calls for separation was therefore acquiring administrative and physical permanence. The next stage was the institutionalization of that separation through restrictions on movement, humanitarian dependency and an emerging system of segregation.

Section 3. Restrictions, Humanitarian Isolation and the Emergence of Permanent Segregation

By the months following the June violence, separation was no longer expressed only through political speeches, nationalist campaigns or communal fear. It was increasingly visible in the practical rules governing where Rohingya could live, where they could travel and whether they could return to the neighbourhoods from which they had been displaced. Measures initially justified as necessary for public security began acquiring characteristics of a more durable system of segregation.

Movement was central to this transformation. Rohingya had faced severe restrictions on travel in northern Arakan long before 2012, but after the June violence new barriers emerged in and around Akyab/Sittwe and other affected areas. Muslims displaced from central neighbourhoods could not simply move freely back into the city. Checkpoints, security controls and the threat of renewed communal violence restricted access to markets, hospitals, government offices and places of employment. For displaced Rohingya, the question was therefore not merely whether a house remained standing but whether the authorities would permit them to reach it and resume ordinary life.

The situation of Aung Mingalar became one of the clearest early examples. Unlike Narzi, much of Aung Mingalar survived the June destruction. Yet its predominantly Muslim population became effectively confined within the neighbourhood. Human Rights Watch documented severe restrictions preventing Muslim residents from moving freely through surrounding parts of Akyab. Security personnel were stationed around the area, and ordinary movement into the wider city became extremely difficult. A neighbourhood that physically survived the violence was therefore transformed through restriction rather than destruction.

This distinction is historically important. Segregation did not require every Muslim neighbourhood to be burned. One area could be emptied through destruction while another could remain standing but be isolated through checkpoints and restrictions. Both processes produced a similar result: Rohingya and other Muslims were increasingly removed from ordinary participation in the social and economic life of the capital.

For residents confined in Aung Mingalar, restrictions had immediate economic consequences. People who had previously worked, traded or purchased necessities elsewhere in Akyab could no longer move normally through the city. Access to food and other essential goods became dependent on what could enter the neighbourhood. Employment opportunities disappeared when workers could no longer reach workplaces. The same restrictions that were presented as preventing renewed communal confrontation therefore also created economic isolation.

Displaced Rohingya outside central Akyab faced an even more precarious situation. Having lost homes or been unable to return, families became increasingly dependent on humanitarian assistance. Food, shelter, sanitation and medical services had to be provided to populations whose normal means of supporting themselves had been disrupted. Humanitarian dependency was therefore not simply the consequence of natural disaster or poverty. It was directly connected to destruction, displacement and restrictions preventing people from restoring their previous livelihoods.

International humanitarian agencies attempted to assist both Muslim and Rakhine displaced populations, but their operations became politically contentious. Rakhine nationalist activists accused some international organisations of favouring Rohingya, while aid agencies faced pressure and hostility concerning their work with Muslim communities. For Rohingya, interference with humanitarian access was particularly dangerous because restrictions on movement had already reduced their ability to obtain food, healthcare and employment independently.

The resulting system contained a fundamental contradiction. Rohingya were increasingly prevented from moving freely enough to support themselves, while the humanitarian organisations upon which they consequently depended could themselves face obstruction or political pressure. Restriction therefore generated dependency, and hostility toward humanitarian assistance then threatened the mechanisms created to keep the restricted population alive.

Medical access became one of the most serious concerns. A displaced or confined population inevitably included pregnant women, children, elderly people and people with chronic or emergency medical conditions. When movement into Akyab was restricted, reaching hospitals or specialist treatment became substantially more difficult. Humanitarian organisations could provide some medical services in displacement locations, but those facilities could not immediately reproduce the full range of treatment available in the state capital.

The same process affected education. Children displaced from destroyed neighbourhoods lost access to their former schools, while movement restrictions complicated access to institutions outside the areas where Muslims were concentrated. The full long-term consequences for education and healthcare developed over subsequent years and are examined in Chapter 12. By the months immediately following June, however, the foundations of those inequalities were already visible.

Property and return became equally important. Thousands of displaced people had homes or land in areas they could no longer safely or legally access. In some locations the houses themselves had been destroyed; in others, insecurity and restrictions prevented residents from returning. Without an effective mechanism guaranteeing property rights and facilitating safe voluntary return, displacement risked becoming permanent dispossession.

For Rohingya, this raised profound concerns about the purpose of separation. A genuinely temporary emergency measure should contain a route back to normality: restoration of security, reconstruction of homes, return of residents and gradual removal of extraordinary restrictions. By late summer 2012, Rohingya saw little evidence of such a process. Instead, barriers to return were becoming embedded while political voices demanding continued separation remained influential.

Human Rights Watch reported that officials had discussed the possibility that Muslim and Rakhine populations might remain separated for years. Such statements were especially alarming when considered alongside conditions already developing on the ground. Aung Mingalar was confined, displaced Muslims were concentrated outside much of central Akyab, and movement restrictions were limiting access to economic and public life. Separation was therefore no longer merely theoretical.

This emerging geography also created different trajectories for displaced communities. Rakhine civilians had suffered genuine displacement and property destruction during the June violence and required humanitarian assistance. Yet the longer-term restrictions increasingly imposed on Rohingya and other Muslims created a different problem: even when immediate violence subsided, their freedom to return, travel and reintegrate remained severely constrained. The distinction between temporary displacement and enforced separation became progressively clearer.

From the Rohingya perspective, the process amounted to the conversion of violence into territorial exclusion. The burning of homes had removed people from particular places; administrative restrictions then helped prevent their return. Political rhetoric portrayed separation as necessary; nationalist networks discouraged social and economic interaction; checkpoints gave the separation physical force; and humanitarian dependency developed among populations whose ordinary livelihoods had been disrupted.

The term “segregation” is therefore appropriate not merely because Rohingya and Rakhine communities increasingly lived apart, but because separation was becoming enforced through unequal restrictions. Two communities voluntarily choosing to avoid one another after violence would represent communal separation. A system in which one population is prevented from freely leaving designated areas, returning to former neighbourhoods or accessing ordinary public and economic spaces involves something more institutional.

By September 2012, the system had not yet reached the form it would assume in later years. Camps and displacement sites were still evolving, humanitarian arrangements remained provisional, and government policy was not always consistent. It would therefore be inaccurate to project every feature of the later segregation regime backward into these first months. Nevertheless, its essential foundations were already present: physical displacement, restricted return, controlled movement, economic isolation and political support for continued separation.

These developments profoundly changed the meaning of the June violence for Rohingya. If displaced families had been permitted to return and rebuild, June might have remained a terrible episode of communal violence followed by reconstruction. Instead, the months that followed increasingly transformed the consequences of violence into a new social and territorial order.

This transformation also affected political expectations. Rakhine nationalist organizations that had demanded separation could see aspects of that demand taking shape on the ground. Rohingya organizations, meanwhile, increasingly warned that segregation was consolidating their exclusion from their own homeland. International humanitarian organisations were placed in the difficult position of assisting populations inside arrangements they feared could become permanent.

By September, therefore, Arakan had entered a dangerous new phase. The open violence of June had diminished, but the political conditions underlying the crisis had not been resolved. Rohingya remained displaced and restricted, nationalist mobilization continued, communal relations were increasingly severed, and the physical separation of populations had become normalized.

Rather than producing reconciliation, the months after June created an environment in which renewed violence could occur against communities already weakened by displacement and isolation. In October 2012, a second and geographically wider wave of attacks would spread through several townships of Arakan, including Mrauk-U, Kyaukphyu, Minbya and Myebon. Evidence from that period would raise even more serious questions about preparation, coordination and the organized movement of attackers.

Continue reading → Part 13, Chapter 9. October 2012: The Second Wave of Organized Violence