Some 21,000 Rohingya have fled across the border into
Bangladesh with harrowing stories
The Burmese army has burned down
more than 1,500 homes and other buildings https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/13/burma-military-burned-villages-rakhine-state in a systematic pattern of destruction
targeting the country’s stateless Rohingya Muslims, according to Human Rights
Watch (HRW).
In a statement released
Tuesday, the watchdog said it had collected satellite images and interviews
with refugees that directly implicate the army, which has consistently denied
allegations of wrongdoing and instead blamed suspected Rohingya jihadists,
claiming that they have been torching their own communities.
“The Burma government and military’s
barrage of unsubstantiated claims that the Rohingya are burning down their own
villages have now finally been exposed as the fraud that we suspected all
along,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for HRW, tells TIME.
“Rather than continue this game
of denials, the Burmese government should allow access to urgently needed
humanitarian assistance, and permit U.N. investigators and the media into these
areas to investigate how this human rights disaster has come about, and who
needs to be held responsible,” he adds.
The accusation is the latest of
mounting claims that the Burmese army has carried out a disproportionate
response to a deadly attack on security forces attributed to Muslim insurgents.
The Oct. 9 attack on three
border security posts by a group of Rohingya militants who call themselves
Harakah al-Yaqin triggered a military lockdown on the northern part of Arakan
state, also called Rakhine, which lies along Burma’s western border near
Bangladesh. Humanitarian aid has been suspended in the area and journalists
have been barred as the Burmese army carries out what it calls “clearance
operations.”
An estimated 21,000 civilians
have since fled across the border into Bangladesh, where they have sought
shelter in severely under-resourced refugee camps. Those who fled tell harrowing stories http://ti.me/2heTrK9 of being terrorized by the armed
forces; one Rohingya woman told TIME that she watched her son being thrown into
a fire and burned alive.
The U.N.’s human rights envoy
for Burma, Yanghee Lee, has warned that evidence indicates the actions of
Burmese security forces are “getting very close to what we would all agree are
crimes against humanity.”
HRW says its collection of
pictures and testimony reveal four new developments: the number of buildings
destroyed is higher than previously thought at more than 1,500; the timing and
locations of the alleged incidents of arson point to a path taken by troops as
they advanced west across the area; the timing and nature of the arson attacks
suggest that they were carried out as reprisal; and some of the images show
Burmese troops present at the site of at least one major fire.
The Rohingya are a stateless
Muslim minority numbering about 1.1 million, and are viewed as one of the worlds’ most persecuted peoples http://ti.me/1ik90gb . They have seen
their rights erode rapidly since communal riots in 2012 displaced more than
100,000 and ushered in a state of religious apartheid. Tens of thousands have
fled to neighboring countries; those who remained are largely denied freedom of
movement and access to basic services.
The crisis on Burma’s western
border has put pressure on Burma’s de facto leader http://ti.me/2gehKqF , Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was swept to power by a landslide election win
last year. Her party, the National League for Democracy, took power in April,
the country’s first civilian government following nearly six decades of
military dictatorship.
Suu Kyi’s failure to rein in
the armed forces as they carried out counterterrorism operations in Arakan
state has led some to question how much authority she actually has.