While claiming to be a “liberation force,” the Arakan Army (AA) is executing a silent cultural cleansing campaign across northern Arakan:
The deliberate shutdown of Rohingya schools, maktabs, and madrasas cutting an entire generation off from education, identity, and community structure.
Reports from Buthidaung, Maungdaw, Kyauktaw, and Rathedaung show a coordinated pattern:
AA patrols enter Rohingya villages, summon teachers, demand written “permission papers,” and then forcibly seal community schools under pretexts like “unregistered institutions” or “security reasons.” Within days, black flags bearing the AA emblem replace signboards. Classrooms remain locked or converted into AA barracks, ration stores, or interrogation rooms.
Rohingya teachers describe being threatened, beaten, or forced to sign documents renouncing teaching activities. Many are accused of being “Islamic influencers” or “foreign agents.” Parents who protest face fines, forced labor, or detention. In several cases, AA confiscated Qurans, prayer books, exam papers, and student records, declaring them “illegal materials.”
The results are devastating:
- Hundreds of Rohingya children now study in secret night classes
- Girls’ education has nearly collapsed
- Madrasas are being dismantled brick-by-brick
- Teachers flee, leaving entire villages without a single educator
- Children are pushed toward labor, trafficking routes, or recruitment pipelines
For the Arakan Army, shutting down Rohingya education is not an administrative action is strategic.
No schools mean:
- A population easier to control
- No community leadership
- No cultural continuity
- More vulnerability to forced taxation and recruitment
A generation forced into AA’s drug-logistics economy
This is not a “conflict-side effect.” This is intentional suppression of Rohingya identity and future, carried out under military occupation and disguised as local governance. AA wants the world to believe it is building an “administration” in Arakan. But its real project is the dismantling of Rohingya societystarting with the destruction of classrooms, blackboards, and books.
A generation without education is a generation without protection. And that is exactly what the Arakan Army is engineering.