Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch yesterday echoed similar stance and said they have evidence that the Myanmar forces were setting fire to Rohingya villages in Rakhine State in a planned manner, report agencies. Amnesty International said it has found evidence of an “orchestrated campaign of systematic burnings” by Myanmar security forces targeting dozens of Rohingya villages over the past three weeks.
The human rights group released a new analysis of video, satellite photos, witness accounts and other data that found more than 80 sites were torched in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State since an August 25 militant attack on a border post.
Top UN officials, including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, have previously expressed concerns about possible “ethnic cleansing” perpetrated against the Rohingya. But Amnesty’s findings, released yesterday in Myanmar, offer some of the most precise ¬evidence that Rohingya areas were specifically targeted.
The satellite images, contracted by Amnesty from satellite providers Deimos and Planet Labs, and other source materials point to “80 large-scale fires in inhabited areas, each measuring at least 375m in length” since August 25, the group said.
The data adds to many ¬accounts of villages being burned from refugees who spoke to UN agencies, rights groups and journalists in Bangladesh.
“The evidence is irrefutable — the Myanmar security forces are setting northern Rakhine State ablaze in a targeted campaign to push the Rohingya people out of Myanmar,” said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s crisis -response director.
“There is a clear and systematic pattern of abuse here. Security forces surround a village, shoot people fleeing in panic and then torch houses to the ground. “In legal terms, these are crimes against humanity.”
The International Criminal Court says crimes against ¬humanity involve torture, enslavement, murder or extermination of civilians in a “widespread and systematic” way.
Hassan also took issue with claims by Myanmar’s government that the Rohingya themselves were setting their homes on fire.
The government’s attempts to shift the blame to the Rohingya population are blatant lies,” she said. “Our investigation makes it crystal clear that its own security forces, along with vigilante mobs, are responsible for burning -Rohingya homes.”
Myanmar authorities have curtailed access for journalists and human rights experts to Rakhine in recent months, and Amnesty acknowledged that the breadth of the damage cannot be verified on site.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), in its statement, said the Myanmar military were deliberately burning ethnic Rohingya villages near the Bangladesh border.
"Such acts of arson, after forcing residents to leave their villages, appear central to the Burmese military's ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya Muslim population in Burma's Rakhine State," the rights body said in a statement.
It released new satellite imagery and sensory data showing that 62 villages in northern Rakhine State were targeted by arson attacks between August 25 and September 14.
The HRW identified 35 of these villages with extensive building destruction from very high resolution satellite imagery, and an additional 26 villages that had active fires detected in near-real time with environmental satellite sensors.
"Our field research backs what the satellite imagery has indicated - that the Burmese military is directly responsible for the mass burning of Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine State," said Phil Robertson, HRW deputy Asia director.
He observed that the United Nations and member countries should urgently impose measures on the Burmese government to stop these atrocities and end the forced flight of Rohingya from Myanmar.
The HRW conducted a detailed building damage assessment in six of the 35 affected villages and identified nearly complete destruction in each case. The total number of destroyed buildings was 948. On the morning of September 13, Human Rights Watch observed from Bangladesh large plumes of thick, black smoke from the Rohingya border village of Taung Pyo Let Yar in Maungdaw township.
A video confirmed to have been taken from a hill overlooking the village shows several buildings burning in the unoccupied village and two large, dark-coloured trucks several hundred metres away.
Village residents stranded at the border described the vehicles as "military trucks" that had previously entered the village. Three villagers who observed the fires from the hill said the smoke came from fires set in village buildings.
The statement said satellite detection of multiple active fires on September 11 and 13 suggest that villages in new areas of Maungdaw township are now being targeted for destruction.
Because of heavy cloud cover, it is almost certain that the actual number of fire-affected villages in the townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung is considerably higher.
The statement said UN Secretary-General António Guterres and human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein have indicated that the Burmese military's actions amount to ethnic cleansing. "Burmese government statements seemingly support these conclusions. Zaw Htay, a Burmese government spokesman, told the media that of 471 villages targeted in "clearance operations" by the military, 176 are now empty and at least 34 others partially abandoned."