Fires in Muslim villages, Amnesty says
BANGKOK — Amnesty International said new satellite images and videos taken as recently as Friday afternoon in Myanmar’s Rakhine state show smoke rising from Rohingya Muslim villages, contradicting Aung San Suu Kyi’s claims that military operations there have ended.
The London group said its sources in Rakhine say the fires were started by members of the Myanmar security forces and vigilante mobs. The latest violence in Myanmar has sent an estimated 429,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh in less than a month.
“This damning evidence from the ground and from space flies in the face of Aung Suu Kyi’s assertions to the world,” Tirana Hasan, Amnesty’s director of crisis response, said in a statement late Friday. “Rohingya homes and villages continue to burn, before, during and after their inhabitants take flight in terror. Not satisfied with simply forcing Rohingya from their homes, authorities seem intent on ensuring they have no homes to return to.”
The top U.S. diplomat for Southeast Asia said America remains deeply troubled by the crisis and allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia Patrick Murphy said while the U.S. condemns August attacks by Muslim Rohingya militants, the response from Myanmar’s security forces has been “disproportionate.” He called on security forces to end the violence in Rakhine, stop vigilantism there, protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian assistance in the area.
Murphy also called on the security forces to work with the civilian government to implement the recommendations of a committee headed by former U.N. SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan.
Most of those fleeing have ended up in camps in the Bangladeshi district of Cox’s Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who had fled earlier rounds of violence in Myanmar.
“The situation in the camps is so incredibly fragile, especially with regard to shelter, food and water, and sanitation, that one small event could lead to an outbreak that may be the tipping point between a crisis and a catastrophe,” Robert Onus, emergency coordinator for the medical relief agency Medecins San Frontieres, said last week.
The latest violence began when a Rohingya insurgent group launched deadly attacks on security posts Aug. 25, prompting Myanmar’s military to start “clearance operations” to root out the rebels. Those fleeing have described indiscriminate attacks by security forces and Buddhist mobs. The government has blamed the Rohingya, saying they set fire to their own homes, but the U.N. and others accuse it of ethnic cleansing.