After 2.5 Years of Ignored Warnings, the World’s Most Authoritative Rights Organisation Confirms the Truth About the Narco-Terrorist Arakan Army (AA)

The Rohingya nation extends its deepest gratitude to Human Rights Watch for releasing the 56-page report “Skeletons and Skulls Scattered Everywhere” on 18 May 2026, and to The Daily Star for its immediate coverage the following day.

For the first time, a major international mechanism has formally documented what the Rohingya Solidarity Organization has been urgently reporting since late 2023: the Arakan Army has been carrying out systematic atrocities against the Rohingya people in northern Arakan State. This report is not just an investigation, it is international validation of the genocidal campaign we have witnessed on the ground constantly for more than two and a half years.

The Hoyyar Siri Massacre – A Day of Unimaginable Horror

On 2 May 2024, Arakan Army fighters carried out a deliberate massacre of unarmed Rohingya civilians in Hoyyar Siri village – also known as Htan Shauk Khan, comprising Bor Para and Fatailla Para hamlets – in Buthidaung township, northern Arakan State. Hundreds of men, women and children who had sought shelter in the village attempted to flee north toward Buthidaung town, many waving white flags in plain sight.

The Terrorist Arakan Army showed no mercy. Fighters ambushed the fleeing crowd from multiple directions and opened fire at extremely close range, in some cases from only five feet away. In the surrounding paddy fields and near the village mosque, civilians were gunned down indiscriminately. Those who fell wounded were finished off with additional shots at point-blank range.

Human Rights Watch has verified by name more than 170 Rohingya killed or still missing, including at least 90 children. The organisation states that the actual death toll is likely much higher. Survivor Kobir Ahmed lost his entire immediate family. “They opened fire on the villagers from a distance of only five feet,” he told investigators. “First my son was hit by a bullet. Then my wife and baby daughter were shot, followed by my other daughter.”

Omar Ahmod, who returned months later, described the scene: “There, I saw heaps of skeletons and skulls scattered everywhere, clothes still intact though the flesh had decayed.” Rashida Hatun watched her wounded husband being executed at close range after the initial shooting.

Forensic analysis of photographs and videos confirmed multiple gunshot wounds consistent with deliberate executions, The village was then systematically looted and burned to the ground.

The True Scale – What the World Still Does Not See

Human Rights Watch’s 56-page report captures only the visible edge of the horror. Investigators identified by name more than 170 Rohingya killed or missing, including at least 90 children, but explicitly state the actual death toll is “likely much higher”. Rohingya activists and survivors who mapped the killings put the number closer to 500. The massacre took place at three separate sites, verified through 29 photographs and 7 videos geolocated by HRW and analysed by forensic experts who confirmed multiple gunshot wounds consistent with deliberate executions.

The slaughter did not end on 2 May 2024. The entire village of Hoyyar Siri was systematically looted and burned to the ground. Satellite imagery confirms the widespread destruction; the once-thriving community is now uninhabitable.

In February 2025, the Arakan Army forcibly relocated most survivors to a makeshift detention camp in Nassawr Para (Hnget Thay), three kilometres south. There they endure extreme hardship: total denial of freedom of movement, forced labour, acute shortages of food and medicine, and repeated coercion into recording false video statements exonerating the Arakan Army while still under its guns.

Those who managed to escape in 2025 reached Bangladesh refugee camps or Malaysia only after months of additional suffering. Hundreds remain trapped in this open-air prison. What HRW has documented is not an isolated atrocity. It is the clearest proof yet of a systematic, ongoing campaign of terror that has targeted the Rohingya people for more than two and a half years for every single hour.

Unmasking the Arakan Army – Narco-Terrorists with a Genocidal Mission

The Arakan Army is not a liberation force. It is a narco-terrorist, Rakhine extremist organisation whose ultimate objective is the complete ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people from their ancestral land in Arakan State.

The massacre at Hoyyar Siri on 2 May 2024 lays bare this reality. Human Rights Watch has concluded that Arakan Army fighters deliberately targeted unarmed civilians, committed murder, torture, arson, looting, and unlawful detention, grave violations of the laws of war that amount to war crimes. Commanders bear responsibility for these systematic atrocities.

The organisation’s own forensic evidence, survivor testimonies, and satellite imagery prove the attacks were not collateral damage in battle but calculated slaughter.

From long time the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) has warned the world that the Arakan Army operates as a drug-funded terrorist machine driven by Rakhine supremacist ideology. The Hoyyar Siri massacre is the logical outcome of their long-term plan: to eradicate the Rohingya presence entirely through terror, displacement and destruction.

The Arakan Army’s swift denial of the report changes nothing. The evidence – over 170 named victims, mass graves, burned villages, and hundreds still held in detention camps – speaks louder than any statement from their leadership. This is ethnic cleansing in plain sight, carried out by a group that has turned northern Arakan into a killing field for the Rohingya.

RSO’s Long Warning – Now Internationally Confirmed

For a long time the Rohingya Solidarity Organization has repeatedly warned the international community that the Arakan Army is systematically targeting Rohingya civilians in northern Arakan State. We documented ambush killings, village burnings, forced displacement, and mass detention while the world remained silent.

The Human Rights Watch report of 18 May 2026 has now delivered the authoritative international confirmation we demanded. Its forensic analysis of 29 photographs and 7 videos, geolocated satellite imagery, and 41 detailed survivor interviews prove exactly what RSO has been reporting since late 2023: the Arakan Army’s deliberate massacre of over 170 named Rohingya , including at least 90 children, in Hoyyar Siri on 2 May 2024 constitutes war crimes.

The evidence is irrefutable. HRW’s conclusion that these acts amount to grave violations of the laws of war

deliberate attacks on civilians, murder, torture, arson and looting validates every alert the Rohingya people have issued. What RSO described as a genocidal campaign is now officially documented by the world’s leading human rights organisation.

“The blood of hundreds of Rohingya civilians has paid the price for the world’s earlier indifference.”

The Continuing Nightmare – Detention, Looting, and Slow Death

The Arakan Army has deliberately prolonged the suffering of every survivor, turning their daily existence into a calculated regime of slow destruction.

Hundreds of Rohingya who escaped the bullets now endure constant surveillance, collective punishment and repeated humiliation under direct Arakan Army control. Medical care is virtually non-existent. Injuries from the massacre remain untreated. Preventable diseases have spread rapidly through the camps, claiming additional lives. Children who watched their parents and siblings executed suffer profound psychological trauma from which they have no chance of recovery.

Women and girls live in permanent fear of abduction and sexual violence. Families have been torn apart. There is no schooling, no work, no future, only the daily reality of hunger, illness and the knowledge that the same force that slaughtered their loved ones now decides whether they live or die.

Human Rights Watch makes clear that these conditions constitute ongoing war crimes, including torture, inhumane treatment and outrages upon personal dignity. The Arakan Army offers neither justice nor redress. Instead, it maintains this system of slow annihilation with cold efficiency.

This is ethnic cleansing by other means, the methodical erasure of a people who have already been driven to the edge of extinction.

Demand for Justice – What the International Community Must Do Now

The Human Rights Watch report has placed the Arakan Army’s war crimes on the international record. The Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) demands immediate, concrete action.

Governments, the United Nations, and regional bodies must designate the Arakan Army a terrorist organisation, impose targeted sanctions on its leadership and financial networks, and cut off all forms of engagement.

The international community must compel the immediate and unconditional release of every Rohingya still detained in Arakan Army camps. An independent international investigation, with full access to northern Rakhine, must be launched without delay to document the full extent of the crimes and prepare cases for prosecution.

Full reparations and the right of safe, voluntary return for survivors must be guaranteed. No Rohingya refugee should ever be forced back into territory controlled by those who massacred their families.

The Rohingya people have endured genocide, mass displacement, and now this latest campaign of slaughter and slow death.

For more than two and a half years we warned the world. Human Rights Watch has now proved us right. The blood of our children and elders demands more than another report. It demands justice.

The Rohingya nation will not be erased. We stand ready to rebuild our homeland — but only when the narco-terrorist Arakan Army is held accountable and removed from power over our lives.

Note of Denial by the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO):

The Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) categorically rejects two paragraphs in the Human Rights Watch report of 18 May 2026 that allege involvement of RSO in forcibly recruiting Rohingya civilians or collaborating with the Myanmar military against the Arakan Army.

These claims appear without any supporting evidence, named witnesses, documentation, or verifiable sources. We respectfully but firmly deny them in their entirety.

At the time of the events described, the Rohingya people were engaged in legitimate self-defence against relentless attacks by both the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army.

The RSO has consistently regarded both the Myanmar junta and the Arakan Army (AA) as war criminals and genocidal forces responsible for atrocities against our people.

In 2017, the Arakan Army stood on the same side as the Myanmar military during the genocide that drove more than 750,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. Only after the 2021 coup, when conflicts arose over control of the narcotics trade in Arakan State, did the two forces turn against each other. The Rohingya have been caught between these rival criminal powers, not allied with either.

We call upon Human Rights Watch to immediately correct these unsubstantiated paragraphs. We stand ready to provide full documentation and facilitate direct meetings with our leadership and survivors so that a proper, evidence-based investigation can be conducted.

The Rohingya nation expects the same rigorous standards of verification that HRW applied to the Arakan Army’s crimes to be applied equally to any allegations concerning Rohingya responses to those crimes.