Digital Heritage Museum
A Rohingya museum, in one place
Fifteen galleries. Objects, textiles, manuscripts, coins, maps and songs — each dated, sourced and set in its historical context. A living archive of a people whose homeland is being erased.
Mrauk-U founded; Muslim settlement at the Arakanese court
Britannica ↗
Citizenship Law excludes Rohingya from the 135 recognised groups
Refworld ↗
Forced into Bangladesh during the 2017 clearance operations
UNHCR ↗
Rohingya refugees now living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh
UNHCR ↗
Unicode block encoding the Hanifi Rohingya script (2018)
Unicode ↗
Curator's note
This museum is a digital reconstruction, not a collection of catalogued originals. Most Rohingya material culture inside Myanmar was burned, bulldozed or left behind, and there is no national museum that collects it. Each exhibit here represents a documented object type, practice or record, illustrated with a commissioned or representative image and accompanied by published sources. Where a claim is contested — as much of Rohingya history is — we cite the primary legal or scholarly record rather than assert it. If you hold real objects, photographs or testimony, we would be honoured to document them.
Historical context
Six centuries of Rohingya history, in ten rooms
The objects in this museum only make sense against the history that produced them — and the history that destroyed most of them. Each era links to a fuller sourced chapter.
8th–14th century
Arab traders and early Islam in Arakan
Arakan sat on the sea route between the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia. Arab, Persian and Bengali merchants settled along the coast, and Muslim communities existed in the region centuries before European contact.
Read the chapter: Origins in Arakan1430–1785
The Mrauk-U Kingdom
King Narameikhla regained the throne in 1430 with help from the Bengal Sultanate. Mrauk-U kings used Muslim titles, struck coins with Persian inscriptions, employed Muslim ministers and patronised poets such as Alaol. Muslims were soldiers, courtiers, cultivators and traders in a Buddhist-ruled kingdom.
Read the chapter: The Mrauk-U Kingdom1785–1826
Burmese conquest and mass flight
The Konbaung conquest of 1784–85 ended Arakanese independence. Tens of thousands fled to British Bengal to escape forced labour and deportation — the first large modern displacement out of Arakan.
Read the chapter: Burmese Conquest1826–1942
British Arakan
After the Treaty of Yandabo, Arakan was governed from British India, and seasonal and permanent movement across the Bengal boundary became routine. Colonial census categories and land policy hardened communal divisions later used to argue that Muslims in Arakan were foreign.
Read the chapter: British Colonial Era1942–1948
War and partition of communities
The Japanese invasion split Arakan: many Muslims sided with the British, many Rakhine Buddhists with the Japanese. Massacres in 1942 displaced both communities into separate northern and southern zones, a segregation that never fully reversed.
Read the chapter: World War II in Arakan1948–1962
Citizens of a new Burma
Rohingya held identity cards, voted and were elected to parliament; the Mayu Frontier Administration governed the north, and Burma Broadcasting Service ran Rohingya-language programmes from 1961 to 1965.
Read the chapter: Post-Independence Burma1962–1982
Military rule and legal erasure
After Ne Win's coup, documents were confiscated and Operation Nagamin (1978) drove some 200,000 people into Bangladesh. The 1982 Citizenship Law then defined citizenship by 'national races' and left the Rohingya stateless.
Read the chapter: The 1982 Citizenship Law1991–2012
Expulsions, camps and confinement
Around 250,000 fled in 1991–92. Those who remained faced movement restrictions, marriage permits, forced labour and land confiscation under the NaSaKa border force. The 2012 violence in Rakhine displaced some 140,000 people, most Rohingya, into closed camps around Sittwe.
Read the chapter: 2012 Rakhine Violence2016–2017
Clearance operations
Military 'clearance operations' after attacks on police posts drove more than 700,000 people into Bangladesh within months. The UN Fact-Finding Mission concluded there was sufficient information to warrant investigation of senior generals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Read the chapter: 2016–2017 Clearance Operations2019–present
The cases and the camps
The Gambia brought Myanmar before the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention in 2019, and the ICJ ordered provisional measures in 2020; the ICC is investigating deportation to Bangladesh, and Argentina has issued arrest warrants under universal jurisdiction. Meanwhile about a million people remain in Cox's Bazar, with renewed fighting in Rakhine since 2023 causing further displacement.
Read the chapter: International Legal Cases
Galleries
Fifteen ways into Rohingya heritage
Each gallery gathers exhibits by theme — from woven textiles and hand-copied manuscripts to mosques, coins and songs.
Full archive
All exhibits
Every exhibit is dated, geo-located and sourced. Click any card to open the full label.
Help us grow the archive
If you or your family hold photographs, documents, textiles, recordings or oral histories, we would be honoured to add them — with your consent and credit — to the museum.