Long before the junta’s February 1 coup, the Rohingya crisis was making headlines in the international media. Today, the issue is still grabbing attention worldwide with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, the stateless Muslim minority from Rakhine State in western Myanmar, in refugee camps in Bangladesh waiting to be repatriated to Myanmar.

Myanmar is facing a lawsuit for the alleged genocide of the Rohingya at the International Court of Justice. To make matters worse, old and new Muslim armed groups are active at the border with Bangladesh again, including the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) and the armed group led by Abdullah Kane that operates like a criminal gang.

The RSO was established in the early 1980s and has frequently attacked security outposts in Maungdaw Township on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, according to historical records.

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In the 1990s, Myanmar’s military carried out a large-scale counter offensive against the RSO and the armed group sank into obscurity. However, since the coup, the RSO has started to revive.

In June, a man claiming to be Major Kyaw Myint Tun from the RSO, clad in uniform and with a holstered pistol, shared a video on social media in which he said in Burmese that the armed group would fight the regime for the rights of Rohingya people. The video also shows RSO fighters undergoing military training.

The RSO’s resurgence has led to friction with the ARSA, which came into the spotlight following its attacks on border guard outposts in Maungdaw in 2016 and 2017. The ARSA said it was fighting for the rights of persecuted Rohingya people, but its insurgent acts and killings of Hindus have brought its motives into question.

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