Amnesty accuses Myanmar army of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Rohingya, as nearly 400,000 flee to Bangladesh.

by Al Jazeera

Security forces and vigilante mobs in Myanmar are carrying out a scorched-earth policy in the majority-Muslim region of Rakhine State, burning down entire Rohingya villages and shooting at people as they try to flee, Amnesty International has said.

According to new satellite imagery, fire-detection data, photographs and videos from the ground, the human rights group said on Thursday that there were at least 80 large-scale fires in inhabited areas across northern Rakhine State since 25 August.

“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.

“Make no mistake: this is ethnic cleansing.”

At least 370,000 Rohingya are estimated to have fled from Rakhine State to neighbouring Bangladesh after fighters from the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA) attacked police posts, sparking a major military backlash.

Myanmar’s government said on Wednesday that nearly 40 percent of Rohingya villages had been targeted by the army in so-called “clearance operations,” with 176 out of 471 villages empty of people, and an additional 34 villages “partially abandoned.”

According to the report, Rohingya said that soldiers, police and vigilante groups would sometimes encircle a village and fire into the air before entering, but would often just storm in and start firing in all directions.

“When the military came, they started shooting at people who got very scared and started running. I saw the military shoot many people and kill two young boys. They used weapons to burn our houses,” one survivor said.

“There used to be 900 houses in our village; now only 80 are left. There is no one left to even bury the bodies.”

Amnesty said it was able to corroborate the burning by analysing photographs taken from across the Naf River in Bangladesh, showing huge pillars of smoke rising inside Myanmar.

The international rights organisation said that in some areas, local authorities warned villages in advance that their homes would be burned, a clear indication that the attacks were both deliberate and planned.

One witness from Pan Kyiang village in Rathedaung township described how in the early morning of September 4, the military came with the village administrator: “He said by 10am today we had better leave since everything would be set on fire.”

As his family was packing up their belongings, he saw what he described as a ‘ball of fire’ hitting his house, at which point they fled in panic.

Villagers who hid in a nearby paddy field witnessed soldiers burning houses using what appears to be rocket launchers.

Amnesty said the exact number of fires and extent of property destruction could be much higher, as cloud cover during the monsoon season has made it difficult for satellites to pick up all burnings.

Security has deteriorated sharply in Rakhine since Aung San Suu Kyi’s government sent thousands of troops into Rohingya villages and hamlets last October after nine policemen were killed by ARSA.

The security forces’ offensive has been beset by allegations of arson, killings and rape; with Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, warning of the risk of ethnic cleansing.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been widely condemned for lack of moral leadership and compassion in the face of the crisis, denting the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s reputation.

Rakhine-based Rohingya fighters, who emerged in October last year, say they have no ties to any ‘terrorist group’.

Ataullah Abu Amar Jununi, centre, heads the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army [ARSA video, YouTube screengrab]

by Faisal Edroos

The Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA), a small group of men fighting in Myanmar’s western region of Rakhine, have rejected accusations they have links with al-Qaeda, ISIL (also known as ISIS) or other armed groups; and warned foreign fighters against entering the troubled region.

In a statement released on Thursday, ARSA said it had “no links with al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), Lashkar-e-Taiba or any other transnational terrorist group”.

In its statement, ARSA used ISIS to refer to the armed ISIL group.

It said it did not welcome the involvement of any of those entities in the conflict and called on countries in the region “to prevent terrorists from entering Arakan and making a bad situation worse”.

Arakan is another term for Rakhine, the western state of Myanmar where most of the country’s 800,000 Rohingya live.

The statement also said the group was concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Rakhine and called on aid groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to visit the area and provide life-saving assistance to those that had been affected by the violence.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a Rohingya living in Rakhine’s embattled township of Buthidaung told Al Jazeera that it was unlikely that ARSA’s latest announcement would sway international support in favour of the Rohingya.

“For years the international community has known that there are no terrorist groups in Rakhine. Even though ARSA has distanced itself from such groups today, it’s clear, our neighbours and the world has no interest in coming to our defence.”

More than 370,000 Rohingya have fled from Rakhine to neighbouring Bangladesh after the military launched a counteroffensive following attacks by ARSA on 30 police posts and an army base last month.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that entire Rohingya villages had been burned to the ground since the start of the security forces’ operation, while Antonio Guterres, UN secretary-general, warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing, appealing to the country’s authorities to end violence against the majority-Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine.

The Myanmar army has put the death toll at around 400, saying most of those killed were fighters. Residents, however, say it is more than 3,000 people.

Despite facing decades of oppression, the predominantly Muslim Rohingya had largely refrained from violence.

‘Systematic abuses’

ARSA, formerly known as Harakatul Yakeen, first emerged in October 2016 when it attacked three police outposts in the Maungdaw and Rathedaung townships, killing nine police officers.

In an 18-minute video statement released last October, Ataullah Abu Amar Jununi, the group’s leader, defended the assault, blaming the Myanmar army for inciting the violence.

“For over 75 years there have been various crimes and atrocities committed against the Rohingya … that’s why we carried out the October 9, 2016, attack – to send a message that if the violence is not stopped, we have the right to defend ourselves,” he said.

Maung Zarni, a non-resident fellow at the European Centre for the Study of Extremism, told Al Jazeera that the group’s actions were borne out of “systematic abuses of genocidal proportions” by the Myanmar military.

“They’re a group of hopeless men who decided to form some kind of self-defence group and protect their people who are living in conditions akin to a Nazi concentration camp,” he said.

“ARSA’s actions resemble Jewish inmates at Auschwitz who rose up against the Nazis in October 1944.”

An extensive report issued last December by the International Crisis Group said ARSA is “led by a committee of Rohingya emigres in Saudi Arabia and is commanded on the ground by Rohingya with international training and experience in modern guerrilla war tactics”.

It said the group did not appear to have “extremist motivations,” and enjoyed considerable sympathy and backing from Muslims in northern Rakhine state.