Myanmar Junta’s Massacre of 20 Arakan Students Exposes Human Rights Hypocrisy

Opinion

Global Arakan Network September 14, 2025

Innocent Students Killed by the Junta Air Strikes (photocrd)

In the blood-soaked annals of Myanmar's endless nightmare, September 12, 2025, stands out like a fresh scar on an already mutilated body. The Myanmar junta, that cabal of khaki-clad tyrants clinging to power through sheer brutality, unleashed its aerial butchers on a school dormitory in Arakan, vaporizing 20 innocent students mid-slumber.

These weren't combatants or conspirators; they were kids, dreams half-formed, futures snuffed out in a hail of bombs. One can almost hear the echoes of their muffled screams, drowned by the roar of fighter jets dispatched from junta strongholds. But let's not romanticize the horror—this isn't poetic tragedy; it's premeditated genocide-lite, a routine Thursday for the State Security and Peace Commission (SSPC) (formerly SAC), as the junta brands its fascist farce.

This atrocity isn't an outlier; it's the junta's signature move, etched in the corpses of countless civilians since their coup d'état in February 2021. Women shredded in markets, children pulverized in villages, elders caught in crosshairs of airstrikes that treat humanity as collateral. The tally? Over 5,000 civilians dead, per conservative estimates from local monitors, with airstrikes alone claiming hundreds of non-combatants. Arakan, that tinderbox of ethnic strife in western Myanmar, has become a favored killing field.

The junta's MiG-29s and Bayraktar drones—gifts from opportunistic arms dealers—rain death indiscriminately, blurring lines between resistance fighters and the families they shield. Yet, in this latest slaughter, the victims were pure: students of the private schools not related to the AA with their uniforms no armor against high-explosive ordnance.

Enter UNICEF, the UN's child-saving arm, which issued a tepid press release on September 13, 2025, decrying the "horrific attack on a school dormitory in Rakhine State that killed at least 20 children." Horrific? Understatement of the year. But here's the gut-punch: nowhere in that sanitized statement does the word "junta" appear. No finger-pointing at the SSPC/SAC, no condemnation of the perpetrators who green-lit the strike from their Naypyidaw bunkers.

It's as if the bombs dropped from the ether, courtesy of vengeful gods rather than a regime armed to the teeth by Russia and other allies. UNICEF's omission isn't oversight; it's institutional cowardice, a diplomatic dance to avoid ruffling feathers in the Security Council. And the silence from other UN bodies? Deafening. No UNHCR outcry, no WHO lament for the orphaned survivors. International embassies in Yangon—those marble mausoleums of moral equivocation—remained zipped, their flags at half-mast only for photo ops, not principle.

But the real rot festers in the so-called bastions of human rights: Fortify Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and their ilk. These organizations, flush with Western grants and Nobel-adjacent prestige, have built empires on Myanmar's misery, yet on this carnage, they issued... crickets. No urgent alerts, no viral campaigns, no op-eds in The Guardian blasting the junta's war crimes.

Fortify Rights, which cut its teeth on Bangagya (Rohingya) advocacy, tweeted nothing about the recent tragedy but stopped short of naming names or mobilizing donors. Amnesty? Their Myanmar desk, ever vigilant on social media, posted a rote update on political prisoners—important, sure—but zilch on the student slaughter. HRW? Buried in reports on digital surveillance, ignoring the analog atrocity of bombed-out dorms.

Why this neglect? Follow the fault lines of identity. The victims were Rakhine Buddhists, ethnic kin to the AA insurgents battling the junta, not the Bangagya (Rohingya) Muslims who've hogged the spotlight since the 2017 exodus. Human rights groups, marinated in a selective outrage fermented by donor priorities, amplify Bangagya (Rohingya) suffering—rightly so, given the genocide label slapped on it by the US and others.

But when non-Bangagya (Rohingya) blood flows? Selective amnesia kicks in. A 2024 Amnesty report clocked in at 50 pages on Bangagya (Rohingya) repatriation but skimmed junta atrocities against Chin, Kachin, and Karen civilians in footnotes. Fortify Rights' 2025 scorecard? Bangagya (Rohingya)-focused fundraisers galore, but Arakanese student deaths? Not a blip.

Compounding the farce, Bangagya (Rohingya) online warriors—those digital foot-soldiers of diaspora activism—piled on with junta-echoing propaganda. X (formerly Twitter) lit up with handles like @RohingyaVoiceMY and @ArakanTruthNow, retweeting junta mouthpieces claiming the dead were "AA terrorists in disguise." "Karma for 2017," one viral thread sneered, dredging up old pogroms to justify fresh graves.

These aren't fringe trolls; they're influencers with thousands of followers, schadenfreude masquerading as justice. Their alignment with the SSPC's narrative—that the AA and its civilian base are fair game—doesn't just betray shared victimhood; it fractures the anti-junta front, handing ammunition to the regime's divide-and-rule playbook.

This hypocrisy isn't benign; it's a venomous cocktail eroding communal bonds in Arakan, where Rakhine and Bangagya (Rohingya) have coexisted in tense truce amid shared oppression. Western embassies, those self-appointed referees, mirror the malaise. The US mission in Yangon issued a boilerplate on "democracy under threat" but balked at specifics. The EU's collective shrug?

Photo Evidence Related to the Incident (photocrd)

A memo on sanctions that somehow misses the school bombing. Contrast this with 2024's Bangagya (Rohingya) boat crisis: statements flew faster than junta jets, with UK and French envoys decrying "ethnic cleansing" in real-time. Fair? Hardly. It's advocacy as identity politics, where Muslim victims get the megaphone, Buddhist ones the mute button. Such bias doesn't dismantle dictators; it deepens ethnic chasms, breeding resentment that the junta exploits like a master puppeteer.

Enough hand-wringing; time for scalpels, not bandages. Human rights groups must purge their Rolodexes of donor-driven blinders. Amnesty and HRW: commission joint task forces on all junta atrocities, not just the photogenic ones. Publish real-time dashboards tracking civilian deaths by ethnicity, forcing transparency on their own selective advocacy. Fortify Rights: pivot from Bangagya (Rohingya) silos to Arakan-wide coalitions, partnering with Rakhine exiles for unified reports. No more siloed suffering—human rights aren't a la carte.

The international community? Wake up, diplomats. Western embassies should lead, not lag: coordinated pressers naming the junta, expelling their envoys, freezing assets tied to airstrike suppliers. UN agencies: embed "perpetrator accountability" in every statement—call out the SSPC by name, or disband the desks drafting milquetoast mush. Bangagya (Rohingya) activists: holster the schadenfreude. Your pain is valid, but so is theirs; amplify solidarity tweets, not sectarian barbs. The AA, for its part, must shield civilians better, but that's no excuse for junta barbarism.

Ultimately, stopping the junta demands proactive fangs, not reactive mewls. Impose oil embargoes on their sites; arm resistance groups under international cover; haul SSPC/SAC generals to The Hague pre-emptively. Arakan's students didn't die for footnotes—they perished for a free Myanmar, where kids sleep safe from skyborne death. The hypocrisy choking global response? It's not just unfair; it's complicit. Shred the scripts, shatter the silence, or watch as more dorms dissolve in fire. The world can't afford another Arakan autopsy; it needs an intervention, now, before the next 20 names etch into infamy.