by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Nay Pyi Taw : The non-profit Human Rights Watch on Friday urged the Myanmar government to stop the demolition of villages abandoned by the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state from where almost 700,000 members of the community have fled to Bangladesh.
HRW said satellite images revealed that the government has bulldozed dozens of Rohingya settlements and added that they should be preserved as “crime scenes” to investigate allegations of atrocities against the military, reports the BBC.
“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, HRW.
“Bulldozing these areas threatens to erase both the memory and the legal claims of the Rohingya who lived there,” he added.
The Rohingya exodus started after August 25, 2017, when the military carried out a campaign in retaliation for attacks by a Rohingya rebel group on multiple government posts.
According to the HRW statement, since late 2017, authorities have used heavy machinery to clear at least 55 villages of all structures and at least two of the demolished villages were previously undamaged.
Between January 9 and February 13, bulldozers razed two settlements in the village of Myin Hlut that appeared intact in images from November 2017, the non-profit said.
“Deliberately demolishing villages to destroy evidence of grave crimes is obstruction of justice,” said Adams.
HRW said that 362 Rohingya villages had already been completely or partially razed during the military campaign last year.
The repatriation of Rohingya refugees, numbering around 688,000, should have began within two months of November 23, 2017 – when an accord between Bangladesh and Myanmar was signed – but Bangladesh decided to postpone the process in January.
The non-profit has demanded that representatives of the UN be given access to Rakhine to study the allegations the army committed murder, rape and other crimes.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
Nay Pyi Taw : A Myanmar government committee investigating the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state said adhering to the rule of law was the best means to resolve the ongoing humanitarian crisis, an statement said on Friday.
A panel was set up this week to find “pragmatic” solutions to restore “security and the rule of law” in Rakhine, from where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya minority Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since an August 25 rebel attack on military and police outposts, reports Efe news.
The committee was convened to implement recommendations presented on August 24 by the Advisory Commission, a group of international observers led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the statement said.
A day before the current violence erupted, Annan had presented a plan to Myanmar authorities to deal with the sectarian problems between the Rohingya and the Buddhist majority gripping Rakhine state.
The UN estimates that at least 370,000 have so far fled across the border with about a 1,000 casualties since the crisis erupted.
Meanwhile, Zaw Htay, a spokesman for Myanmar’s Presidential Office, said the reason people abandoned their homes was because many were told to leave by family members who were involved in terrorist activities.
“Some of them are directly involved with terrorist activities and some are sympathizers for the terrorist group,” Zaw Htay wrote in an email to CNN on Thursday.
“And some are running away to avoid arrest by police because they had some connections with the terrorist group.”
The government has said that 176 out of 471, or 37.4 per cent of all Rohingya villages were now empty of people, and an additional 34 villages were “partially abandoned”.
The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, when asked on Wednesday if he considered the displacement of thousands of Rohingyas to be ethnic cleansing, said: “When one-third of the Rohingya population has got to flee the country, can you find a better word to describe it?”
“I call on Myanmar authorities to suspend military action, end the violence, uphold the rule of law and recognize the right of return of all those who had to leave the country.”
Prior to the current wave of violence, Myanmar’s population of Rohingya was estimated to number about 1 million.
—IANS
