Rohingya History — A Complete Visual Archive

7th – 18th century

Ancient & Medieval Arakan

1826 – 1948

Colonial Era

1948 – 1982

Independence & Erasure

1978 – 2017

Mass Expulsions

2017 – present

Justice & The Present

Ancient & Medieval Arakan · 7th – 18th century

A coastline at the crossroads of two worlds

Long before modern borders, the coast of Arakan was a meeting point of Indian Ocean traders, Bengali sultanates, and Buddhist kingdoms. Arab and Persian Muslim merchants settled along the rivers from the 7th century onward, marrying into local communities and giving rise to the people who would become the Rohingya. By the 15th century, the Mrauk-U kingdom ruled a multi-faith state where Muslim viziers served Buddhist kings, court poets wrote in Persian, and Bengali was a courtly language.

Colonial Era · 1826 – 1948

Drawn into a colonial map they did not draw

After the First Anglo-Burmese War, Arakan became part of British India and later British Burma. Cross-border movement — already centuries old — was now legally framed as 'migration' from Bengal into Burma, planting the seeds of the labels and grievances that would be weaponised a century later. In World War II, Arakan became a brutal front line: Rohingya communities largely sided with the British, Buddhist Rakhine with the Japanese, and entire villages on both sides were destroyed.

Independence & Erasure · 1948 – 1982

Promised citizens, denied a country

When Burma gained independence in 1948, Rohingya leaders served in parliament and the army; the language had a recognised place on state radio. Within a generation, military rule reversed all of it. Successive juntas chipped away at Rohingya rights — identity cards were withdrawn, mosques were closed, movement was restricted — and in 1982 a single Citizenship Law erased the Rohingya from Myanmar's list of recognised peoples, rendering them stateless overnight.

Mass Expulsions · 1978 – 2017

Four waves. One repeating pattern.

Between 1978 and 2017, the Burmese military launched at least four major expulsions targeting the Rohingya. Operation Naga Min (1978), Pyi Thaya (1991–92), the 2012 Rakhine pogroms, and finally the 2016–2017 'clearance operations' that the UN-mandated investigation concluded carried the hallmarks of genocide. In just one month — August 2017 — more than 750,000 Rohingya were driven across the Naf River into Bangladesh.

Justice & The Present · 2017 – present

Camps, courts, and an unfinished story

Today, more than 1.6 million Rohingya live as refugees in Bangladesh — most in the camps of Cox's Bazar, the largest refugee settlement on Earth. The Gambia has filed a genocide case at the International Court of Justice; the ICC has opened a separate investigation. Inside Myanmar, the civil war between the junta and the Arakan Army has put Rohingya villages once again on the front line. The story is unfinished — and the world is now writing its part of it.

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A thousand years of Rohingya history

A coastline at the crossroads of two worlds

Origins in Arakan

The Mrauk-U Kingdom

Burmese Conquest of Arakan

Drawn into a colonial map they did not draw

British Colonial Era

World War II in Arakan

Promised citizens, denied a country

Post-Independence Burma

Military Rule & Erosion of Rights

The 1982 Citizenship Law

Four waves. One repeating pattern.

Early Mass Expulsions

2012 Rakhine Violence

2016–2017 Clearance Operations

Camps, courts, and an unfinished story

International Legal Cases

Life in the Refugee Camps

The Rohingya Today

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