Amnesty decries 'campaign of burnings' targeting Rohingya

From across the border in Bangladesh, smoke can be seen rising from what once were villages in Rakhine state, Burma. Photo / AP

Amnesty International says it has turned up evidence of an "orchestrated campaign of systematic burnings" by Burmese security forces targeting dozens of Rohingya villages over the last three weeks.

The human rights group is releasing a new analysis of video, satellite photos, witness accounts and other data that found more than 80 sites were torched in Burma's northern Rakhine State since an August 25 militant attack on a border post. The United Nations children's agency estimates that as many as 400,000 people have fled to Bangladesh since then.

Amnesty says combination shows burned homes of Rohingya Muslims in the village of Inn Din, northern Rakhine state, Burma. Photo / AP

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 Burma, also known as 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," she said. "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 Burma's Government that the Rohingya themselves were setting ablaze their homes.

"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."

Burmese 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. It said the full extent of destruction "is likely to be much higher" than the evidence compiled because cloud cover sometimes blocked the satellite views.

The UN-backed, 47-country Human Rights Council in Geneva is expected to take up a discussion on Burma on Monday.

- AP