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REPORTS THAT 390,000 Rohingya Muslims have been forced out of Myanmar have been strengthened by satellite imagery that shows their villages being burned over the course of this week.
Rohingya refugees have been arriving in neighbouring Bangladesh over the past week, saying that they had been forced to flee because their villages had been burned to the ground and their family members, including young children, had been slaughtered.
Amnesty International’s analysis of active fire-detection data, satellite imagery, photographs and videos from the ground support the claims from those who have fled the area that security forces or vigilantes are purging the minority group.
The rights group says that more than 80 sites have been set ablaze since 25 August in a ”mass-scale scorched-earth campaign” across northern Rakhine state.
The UN, which has been denied access to visit the area, has accused Myanmar of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya, a stateless group that the Buddhist-majority country refuses to recognise as citizens.
Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director, said:
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. Make no mistake: this is ethnic cleansing.
Escape
A census published in 2015 said 3 million people lived in Rakhine, including an estimated 1.1 million Rohingya.
Rakhine’s northernmost Maungdaw district was home to around three quarters of that population, according to government figures.
But nearly 40% of its Rohingya villages have been completely abandoned in the past three weeks, said government spokesman Zaw Htay.
“There are 176 villages where the whole village fled,” he said on Wednesday, out of 471 Rohingya communities in total.
The recent refugee arrivals in Bangladesh amount to more than a third of the total number of Rohingya once based in Myanmar.
Tens of thousands of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Hindus have also been driven from their homes since late August, saying they were targeted by the Rohingya militants.
According to estimates by UNICEF, around 60% of those fleeing the violence are children.
“There are acute shortages of everything, most critically shelter, food and clean water,” said Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF’s Representative in Bangladesh.
Conditions on the ground place children at risk of high risk of waterborne disease. We have a monumental task ahead of us to protect these extremely vulnerable children.
Yesterday, Myanmar’s government said some 4,000 people had started trickling back to their villages in Maungdaw as clashes between the army and militants ebbed, without specifying their ethnicity.
The government refutes the accusations of ethnic cleansing, instead saying the army has carried out targeted operations to snuff out the militant group, whose attacks on police posts in late August unleashed the massive military response.
Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi had come under criticism from around the world for delaying speaking against the killing of Rohingya Muslims. She then came under criticism again when she blamed “a huge iceberg of misinformation” for the reports of violence and deliberate fires.
But US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a longtime Suu Kyi friend and ally, said that during a telephone call she “agreed with the need for immediate and improved access of humanitarian assistance to the region, particularly by the International Red Cross, and she conveyed that she is working toward that end.”
- With reporting from AFP
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Why was my comment deleted does the journal endorse Rohingya insurgents violence against native people?
@Johnny Gunn: Agreed. You should have full reign to show your right wing, reactionary, blinkered, fake news/trump-inspired, myopic view of the world! The last thing we’d want is anyone confusing you with a decent human being with the ability to view something objectively!
@Graham: excuse me I only asked if amnesty cared about Rohingya persecution of Buddhists in the West.
@Johnny Gunn: perhaps it was so perversely factually false and so hate ridden that it offended standards of decency.
@Fiona deFreyne: I don’t see that criteria in the comment policy
@Johnny Gunn: so…not denying the description of you? While your perspective is poisonous and as loosely tethered to reality as trumps hair is to his head it’s somewhat refreshing to see you own ur convictions. As for this particular post I genuinely do think, if it was as you described, it should be left up. The fact that you repeatedly equate ethic cleansing in the east with the attacks in the west of
@Graham: you sound deranged and unhinged go out and get some fresh air
@Graham:
@Johnny Gunn: hmmm…that’s an effective reply. Well done
@Graham: about as effective as your hysterical ranting about Trumps hair!
@Johnny Gunn: half a million people being burned out of their homes and you act like you’re being persecuted because of a deleted comment. How will you get through the day?
@The Bloody Nine: haha comprehension fail where did I say the violence is as a result of a deleted comment??
@Johnny Gunn: read my comment sloooowly…reeeallly sloooowly. Ask mommy if you need help.
@Johnny Gunn: twas actually quite an apt simile but good to know anyone who disagrees with you is hysterical.
@Johnny Gunn: Maybe you were repeating that lie you’ve been on about, that the Rohingya want to setup a Caliphate. You still haven’t provided evidence for that chestnut.
@Johnny Gunn: Yes there was violence from some Rohingya groups, but the response has been savage beyond all reasonable proportion. It would be like if the British Army had swept through the North burning every Catholic out of house and home and chasing them south of the border in retaliation for IRA attacks. Yes, the initial attacks should be mentioned in discussions about this topic but they come nowhere close to justifying these reprisals.
@Patrick Kearns: you won’t get it (as you know). He’ll keep on lying, knowing people will believe it.
@Ewan Euphrenza: I actually gave the British army/ira example you gave, on a related post a few days ago. I was told that because it was a different continent and time period the analogy had no credibility, and wouldn’t answer my question. These people just ignore any reason or logic, so I guess your not going to get a response
@Johnny Gunn: The journal has no obligation to publish your very obnoxious, ignorant and false assertions. Your contrarian views are particularly shocking and offensive with regard to the Rohyngya, who are being murdered and victimised in a deliberate campaign of mass ethnic cleansing and genocide.
@Johnny Gunn:
‘Tens of thousands of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Hindus have also been driven from their homes since late August’
Obviously the guys here didn’t even bother reading the article before engaging in ridiculous ad hominems.
Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Israel/Palestine it is clear that Man is a tribal and territorial creature, perhaps those who defend mass immigration believe that something like this will not happen again in Europe, or perhaps the promoters of such a policy know exactly where it will lead to?
War is a racket – Major General Smedley D. Butler USMC
@James Connolly: Israel was created when a mass migration of European Jews fleeing the Holocaust happened, the intra-ethnic tribal conflict in NI is a result of the mass migration of Scots into Ulster 17th century also in the same time frame a mass migration of people from Ethiopia, the Tutsi’s settled in Rwanda setting the scene for one of the worlds bloodiest conflict. Dont let your ideology blind you, mass immigration seldom works out well.
So much for Buddhist inclined peoples having a serene outlook on life and their neighbours!
@gowfc@yahoo.com W:
Makes you wonder what drove Buddhists to say enough is enough.
@Remy: Really that’s your take away? No pity or empathy? Instead “well they must’ve done something really bad to bring this on themselves”?
@Graham:
Calm down there snowflake, you’ll burst a blood vessel. You do understand the history of this conflict, don’t you? Or did you suddenly gather some interest in the last few weeks. I asked a question and you jump in with an assumption, freak.
@Remy: an assumption based on what you said…should I base it on something else? And I’m not the one getting butt-hurt and insulting people who I can’t win an argument with
@gowfc@yahoo.com W:
They have even managed to turn the Buddhists homicidal.
Does this suggest possible issues with a certain religion.
@Graham: What argument? :)
@Graham:
a man minus an argument, is man minus a purpose
@Dave J: What about a man with a stupid argument based on lies…?
Hopefully this attempted genocide campaign can be brought to the earliest possible halt. It has been a horrific campaign of attempted extermination and expulsion.
It is frightening that the leader of Myanmar supposedly knows so little of what is happening in her country.
@Fiona deFreyne:
Why is it happening Fiona? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the coincidental rise in Islamic attacks on state facilities in the region now would it?
@Thought for Food: the state that refuses to acknowledge their existence?
Terrible but all the same not much fuss kicked up about all the other religions cleansed from muslim countries
Maybe the military are really still in control
@Dave O’Hanlon: The military have always been in control Sun Kyi is little more than a figurehead
@Anne Marie Devlin: If she does speak out there’s a good chance the junta will undo everything accomplished over the last few years in the country.
Given to number of comments here it appears that the Journal censorship is in full swing unless you agree with the Journal’s opinion., rather than actually knowing the real situation on the ground and the history of this conflict.
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: the comments to views ratio seems to be roughly equal to the other articles posted around the same time. Put away the tin foil hat
This won’t be the last.
Piss Nobel Prize was always Given to murderers. Yitzhak Rabin asked his Army to break Palestinian bones.
Who cares about the Rohingya they are not chosen Blondes with Blue eyes.
Je suis Charlot.
@femo: don’t forget Obama…
Communists will communist.
And that usually isn’t very pretty.
have your say