TORCHING OF ROHINGYA VILLAGES VISIBLE ON SATELLITE IMAGES
▶ Ten areas identified where fires had been lit in Rakhine state, Fiona MacGregor reports
Satellite images revealed the large-scale burning of Rohinyga villages in Myanmar’s Rakhine state yesterday, as UN secretary general Antonio Guterres expressed deep concern over reports of civilian killings.
At least 10 areas where fires had been lit since Friday, or were still burning on Monday, were detected by Human Rights Watch in the images.
The rights group said the blazes were spread over a much larger area of Rakhine than similar fires believed to have been lit by security forces during the widely condemned operations in the region last October.
The recent blazes that villagers said were started by security forces but which the government blames on Rohingya “terrorists”, broke out after the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army launched deadly attacks on security posts in Rakhine early on Friday.
The government has since designated Arsa a terrorist group.
The rights group said further fires might not have been picked up by the satellites because of heavy monsoon cloud cover.
“This new satellite data should cause concern and prompt action by donors and UN agencies to urge the Burmese government to reveal the extent of ongoing destruction in Rakhine state,” said Phil Robertson, its deputy Asia director.
“Shuffling all the blame on insurgents doesn’t spare the Burmese government from its international obligations to stop abuses and investigate alleged violations.”
Details also emerged of civilians caught up in the fighting in Rakhine’s north, where most of the population is Muslim.
The government said five members of a family from the Daignet minority were killed at the weekend when insurgents attacked their village.
At a meeting with diplomats yesterday, security chiefs and government representatives again raised allegations of support for terrorists by international charities, suggesting pipes and fertiliser supplied for development could have been used to make bombs.
The claims of complicity by international aid organisations have been widely derided by the international community, and exacerbated anti-foreign sentiment on Myanmar social media.
The information committee of state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi posted photographs of destroyed Buddha statues on its Facebook page yesterday, saying they were damaged by the terrorists in Rakhine.
Such images will inflame anger across Myanmar, where even relatively low-scale insults to Buddhism lead to public outrage and violence.
Arsa appears to be drawing increasing numbers to its ranks. Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh said many men from the camps there had crossed back into Myanmar to join the fight, while others chose to stay in Rakhine after sending their families to areas of safety.
“There are hundreds of us hiding in the hills. We took an oath to save Arakan [another name for Rakhine] even if it is with sticks and small knives,” one insurgent told AFP.
Thousands of Rohingya, mainly women and children, have fled to Bangladesh in recent days, amid reports that civilians were being shot by security forces.
The latest developments have raised fears of a repeat of last year’s “clearance operations” in the region, which the UN said may have amounted to ethnic cleansing.
The Myanmar government has refused to grant access to independent investigators.
The attacks by Arsa have been widely condemned by the international community. Observers said that the move would worsen the situation for civilians.
But the fighting also prompted calls for the security forces to avoid last year’s brutality and to ensure civilians were protected – calls that increasingly appear to have fallen on deaf ears.
Calling for neighbouring Bangladesh to ensure refugees were allowed in, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric noted that “many of those fleeing are women and children, some of whom are wounded”.
Human Rights Watch said that while the new satellite images did not identify the cause of the fires, some correlated with reports saying the buildings had been burnt by troops.
“One man who fled to Bangladesh from Taung Pyo Let Yar village, near where Human Rights Watch detected active fires, said he witnessed security forces shooting people as they chased militants, and that homes were set ablaze,” the report said.