Press Release
It has come to our attention that in September 2025, a total of 202so-called paper organizations made an appeal urging the United Nations and foreign diplomats to recognize the terrorist drug cartel known as the United League of Arakan/Arakan Army (ULA/AA) as an administrative authority.
We categorically reject this deceptive campaign. Such underhanded appeals do not reflect the genuine will of the indigenous peoples of Arakan who have lived there for centuries. In particular, the ULA/AA does not represent the Rohingya in any way, and in reality, it does not speak for other minority communities either.
The ULA/AA is an unlawful, violent organization officially designated as a terrorist group. Since 2012, it has carried out atrocities amounting to genocide and war crimes against the Rohingya, leaving behind a trail of massacres, displacement, and persecution. Tens of thousands of pieces of evidence have already been submitted to international bodies including the United Nations, the ICC, the ICJ, the Argentine Court, the UN Fact-Finding Mission(FFM), and the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
At its core, the ULA/AA is sustained by drug trafficking, human trafficking, and cross-border criminal enterprises. Multiple reports from Bangladeshi authorities, international observers, and even Myanmar officials confirm the group’s role in the narcotics trade stretching from the Bangladesh-Myanmar border into South and Southeast Asia. These illicit businesses finance its weapons and operations. Without them, the group could not survive.
Meanwhile, ordinary people in Arakan continue to suffer. Military offensives and Terrorist AA’s violence have displaced thousands. Communities face unemployment, hunger, and despair. Some are pushed to desperation, even suicide. In this situation, the ULA/AA’s lobbying for recognition cannot be seen as the will of the people, it is the will of a cartel seeking international cover.
The group’s destabilizing activities go beyond Myanmar. The ULA/AA has formed alliances with other militant outfits, such as the Kuki-Chin group, providing them with weapons, training, and cross-border recruitment inside Bangladesh. Recent insurgent crimes in Bandarban highlight how its operations spill across borders, straining relations with Bangladesh and undermining regional security.
Though the ULA/AA publicly claims it is fighting dictatorship, its demand for recognition as a governing authority exposes its real secessionist agenda: to fracture Myanmar’s Union and establish an independent narco-state built on criminal wealth and ethnic cleansing. For the Rohingya, who already face genocide, this is nothing less than a nightmare, rule by an organization that has persecuted, killed, and humiliated them.
Importantly, our position must be clear: rejecting the ULA/AA does not mean endorsing the Myanmar military junta. Both have committed grave abuses. The junta has long denied Rohingya citizenship and rights; the ULA/AA, meanwhile, seeks to entrench apartheid, dispossession, and forced expulsion of Rohingya people from their ancestral homeland. Neither can claim moral or legal legitimacy.
In ULA/AA-controlled areas today, discrimination is systematic. Rakhine IDPs have been permitted to return home, but Rohingya remain barred, denied even freedom of movement. Rohingya refugees in camps are left in limbo, prevented from reclaiming their villages. Excessive taxation crushes livelihoods: fishermen are forced to surrender half their catch, shrimp farm owners must pay to lease back their own land, and Rohingya homes and shops are seized. Entire villages have been emptied in Buthidaung so the group can build military camps, house its fighters’ families, and settle Buddhist communities in their place. These are textbook apartheid policies.
ULA/AA propaganda claims it is integrating Rohingya into its structures, by reopening mosques, forming “jury committees,” or recruiting youth into its ranks. But these are not gestures of inclusion; they are acts of coercion under threat of violence. The group has never once recognized the Rohingya by name. Instead, it insults them with slurs such as “illegal Bengalis” or “Kula” and continues to deny their rightful status as citizens of Myanmar/Arakan.
Recognizing the ULA/AA as a governing authority without scrutiny would be disastrous. It would mean granting international legitimacy to a cartel that commits genocide, runs a narcotics empire, and sustains itself through trafficking and violence. Such recognition would not deliver peace or justice to Arakan, it would entrench terror and lawlessness.
The Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) therefore urges the international community, the United Nations, and all diplomatic actors to resist these manipulative campaigns. Recognition of the ULA/AA would not serve human rights, peace, or justice. It would instead give impunity to those who have already inflicted immense suffering on the Rohingya and other vulnerable peoples of Arakan.
Central Executive Committee (CEC)
Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO)