Myanmar bulldozing scores of Rohingya villages, Human Rights Watch says
Activists say "bulldozing these areas threatens to erase both the memory and the legal claims of the Rohingya who lived there".
Friday 23 February 2018 13:05, UK
Myanmar's government is bulldozing Rohingya villages and destroying precious evidence, according to a rights groups.
Since late 2017, at least 55 villages in Rakhine State have been cleared of buildings and vegetation using heavy machinery, Human Rights Watch said.
Most of them were among more than 300 torched by security forces in August in a wave of violence which saw 688,000 Rohingya flee to Bangladesh.
The group analysed a series of satellite images recorded between 11 November 2017, and 19 February 2018.
It said they showed clearance operations began in late 2017, but are still ongoing.
Activists said at least two villages flattened by bulldozers in 2018 had not been destroyed by fire.
Human Right Watch said it could not independently verify if the houses were occupied at the time.
The United Nations has condemned Myanmar's military operation against the Rohingya as "ethnic cleansing".
Myanmar denies the charge but has blocked the UN from investigating an area where thousands of Rohingya are believed to have been killed.
Campaigners say the UN must now demand the clearance is stopped and areas are treated as crime scenes until its independent investigation is carried out.
"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 Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW.
"Bulldozing these areas threatens to erase both the memory and the legal claims of the Rohingya who lived there."
Images of destroyed villages began circulating on social media earlier this month, but officials claimed they were part of an effort to "build back" villages to a higher standard than they were before.
Myanmar has said it is ready to start repatriating refugees living in Bangladeshi camps, but many are refusing to return until they get guarantees of safety and basic rights.
Meanwhile, activists are calling on Bangladesh to reject Myanmar's request to block and cease aid to 6,500 refugees living in "no man's land" between the two countries.
"The situation of the Rohingya in no man's land shows us clearly that any efforts to repatriate the nearly 700,000 Rohingya who fled last year are premature, ill-advised, and ultimately doomed to fail unless several preconditions are met for a safe and equitable return," warned Kyaw Win, executive director of Burma Human Rights Network.
"While Burma assures they can properly return mass numbers of refugees to safety and dignity, we are watching them fail to humanely treat even 6,500 of them. This should be an alarming red flag for the international community."
