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 Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s claims that military operations there have ended.
The NGO said that its sources in Rakhine claim the fires were started by members of the Burmese 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 [San] Suu Kyi’s assertions to the world,” Amnesty director of crisis response Tirana Hasan said in a statement on 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.”
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia Patrick Murphy said the US remains deeply troubled by the ongoing crisis and allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine.
Murphy, speaking on Friday in a conference call from Bangkok, said that while the US condemns last month’s 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 UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.
Most of those fleeing have ended up in camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who had fled prior 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,” Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator Robert Onus said on Thursday.
“Hundreds of thousands of refugees are living in an extremely precarious situation and all the preconditions for a public health disaster are there,” Onus said in a statement, calling for a “massive step-up of humanitarian aid.”
Another danger was highlighted by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which condemned Myanmar’s use of anti-personnel mines along its border with Bangladesh.
“According to eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence, and multiple reports, antipersonnel mines have been laid between Myanmar’s two major land crossings with Bangladesh, resulting in casualties among Rohingya refugees fleeing government attacks on their homes,” the group said.
It demanded that Myanmar immediately cease using such weapons and accede to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, to which 162 other nations are parties.
Murphy said the US welcomed Suu Kyi’s decision to speak publicly about the problem this week.
He also said the US realizes that Suu Kyi has limited control over the security forces due to the nation’s “flawed constitution,” which allows the military to remain politically powerful and guarantees it control over key ministries, including those related to security and defense.
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