Myanmar bulldozed scores of Rohingya villages since November: HRW
Yangon, (MILLAT ONLINE):Satellite imagery shows Myanmar authorities have bulldozed at least 55 Rohingya villages in northern
Rakhine in recent months, Human Rights Watch said Friday, condemning the government for erasing
evidence at sites where troops are accused of atrocities.
Northern Rakhine has been nearly emptied of its Rohingya population since last August,
when a military crackdown drove some 700,000 of the persecuted group across the border to
Bangladesh.
The UN has accused Myanmar of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Muslim
minority, who face acute discrimination in the mainly Buddhist nation.
Since November Myanmar authorities have further demolished at least 55 villages with
heavy machinery, clearing out all structures and vegetation, satellite images obtained by Human
Rights Watch showed.
At least two of the flattened villages were previously undamaged by fires, the watchdog
said.
“Many of these villages were scenes of atrocities against Rohingya and should be preserved
so that the experts appointed by the UN to document these abuses can properly evaluate the evidence to
identify those responsible,” said HRW’s Asia director Brad Adams.
“Bulldozing these areas threatens to erase both the memory and the legal claims of the
Rohingya who lived there,” he added.
Haunting images of levelled villages first circulated on social media earlier this month after
they were posted by an EU diplomat.