The coup is unleashing political forces that have long been dormant.

The coup staged by the Burmese military on February 1, 2021 is plunging the country into an all-out war waged by the armed forces against virtually the whole of the population, as a massive civil disobedience movement is preventing the generals from taking full control of the state. In this lopsided war, the junta led by the Commander in Chief, Min Aung Hlaing, is using all the instruments of violence at its disposal with maniac relish.

officially known as Myanmar — celebrated the seventieth anniversary of its independence at a moment when the failures of its incomplete nation-building project have become increasingly evident. Last year saw the almost complete ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya minority in the northwestern state of Arakan.

Debunking the myth of massive waves of "illegal immigrants" from Bangladesh to Arakan.

Ethnic identity determines to a large degree who belongs to the Burmese polity, and the place in it of those who do; some groups are de facto relegated to subordinate positions in a hierarchy dominated by the Bamar majority. But the Rohingya are excluded altogether. Since the late seventies, the government’s policy has been one of containment.

“[The mullah] told me I would be branded as a traitor if I refused to join, [that] he would make sure that the community would shun me and that I could even be killed,” he recounted.

Husbands, neighbours, grandsons – police and troops dragged them from their homes in Myo Thu Gyi, Rakhine state, and executed them. All were innocent civilians say witnesses to the killings, revenge for police deaths in a rebel raid

In all likelihood, the attacks were carried out by militants from Rakhine State's mostly stateless Muslim minority, known as the Rohingya. In the aftermath, three districts in the north of the state were declared a "military operations area," and the security forces launched the still ongoing "Operation Backdoor" to hunt down suspected attackers.

The administration of President Thein Sein has refused to disclose any evidence the “Myanmar Muslim Army” is real, and this has raised the prospect of the government inventing an Islamic terrorist threat to justify a new front in its longtime persecution of Muslims. All of them were arrested between September and November.

Myo Thu Gyi was the first village attacked by the security forces. Until now, the area has been completely closed off to foreign journalists, but TIME was granted a permit to visit Maungdaw independently, the first since the violence began.

Sittwe, Myanmar - Ruk and Kun Suma were born five minutes apart on March 27 in a camp for displaced Rohingya in Rakhine State, a northwestern province of Myanmar. Their mother, an emaciated 40-year-old woman named Noor Begun, suffers from tuberculosis and is unable to breastfeed them. The family cannot afford milk either.

With the death in December of Benedict Anderson, the world lost a towering figure in studies of the region.

'I didn’t know it was going to be like this,' says Mohammad Idiris, a Rohingya Muslim speaking from a refugee camp in Aceh. 'If I had known, I would have stayed in Myanmar.' Last October, Mohammad Idiris put himself in the hands of human traffickers in Myanmar. His decision followed years of ethnic persecution of Rohingya Muslims, and it started a harrowing journey of more than six months that never brought him to his chosen destination, Malaysia.

LANGSA, Indonesia, 15 June 2015 (IRIN) - Nur Yanah can’t hold back the tears when she recalls hundreds of emaciated boat people arriving in her native Aceh province after being rescued by local fishermen in defiance of the government decision to leave them adrift. The new arrivals were Bangladeshis escaping poverty and ethnic Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar.

President Thein Sein proclaimed before the UN last week that his government places a high priority on ending ethnic conflicts, but that has proved elusive in ruggedly beautiful Kachin state, where the race to exploit abundant natural resources feeds a growing humanitarian crisis. Pictures by Arturo Rodriguez.

Muslim minority driven into camps or hiding as Myanmar struggles with outbreak of sectarian violence.