⏵ Methodology
The evident inability of human rights organizations and the media to access Rakhine State,
especially Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships, poses a great challenge in documenting abuses
of the AA. It has plunged the towns into complete darkness imposing all the necessary
restrictions, and preventing the dissemination of information. Given the situation, it is incredibly
difficult to travel to the region and then write a precise account of the AA human rights violations
against the Rohingya community. In such a scenario, the sole source of information regarding
human rights violations, community crimes, and widespread abuse is the testimony of victims
fleeing the violence. Irrespective of all the challenges, we did our best to document the atrocities
by primarily relying on the eyewitness accounts, experiences, and testimonies of the victim
survivors.
The research for this report was conducted over a period of months between November 2024 and
January 2025. All these testimonies, collected for the report, form a core source for documenting
the AA’s abuses. To collect these testimonies, a remote data collection strategy was employed,
including online interviews and phone conversations conducted across countries like Bangladesh,
Myanmar, Malaysia, and Thailand. A total of 48 interviews between the age groups 15-58 were
carried out, focusing on various human rights violations such as sexual violence, property
destruction, physical abuses, tortures, killings, displacement, and disintegration of families, etc,
and other forms of abuse. Five Rohingya refugee civilians were interviewed for sexual atrocities
from refugee camps in Bangladesh. Interviews in Bangladesh were conducted in person by our
Rohingya Human Rights Initiative (ROHRIngya) ground staff. Due to the restrictions in Rakhine
State, interviews were conducted over the phone.
The majority of the testimonies used in this report were also collected through a combination of
phone interviews and digital data collection using KoboToolbox. A structured set of questions
was designed under multiple thematic categories to ensure consistency, depth, and analytical
relevance across interviews. These questionnaires were programmed into the Kobo platform,
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