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Myanmar Bulldozes What Is Left Of Rohingya Muslim Villages

Myanmar Bulldozes What Is Left Of Rohingya Muslim Villages
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First, their villages were burned to the ground. Now, Myanmar's government is using bulldozers to literally erase them from the earth - in a vast operation rights groups say is destroying crucial evidence of mass atrocities against the nation's ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority.

Myanmar Bulldozes What Is Left Of Rohingya Muslim Villages

Satellite images of Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state, released to The Associated Press by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe on Friday, show that dozens of empty villages and hamlets have been completely leveled by authorities in recent weeks - far more than previously reported.

The villages were all set ablaze in the wake of violence last August, when a brutal clearance operation by security forces drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into exile in Bangladesh.

While Myanmar's government claims it's simply trying to rebuild a devastated region, the operation has raised deep concern among human rights advocates, who say the government is destroying what amounts to scores of crime scenes before any credible investigation takes place. The operation has also horrified the Rohingya, who believe the government is intentionally eviscerating the dwindling remnants of their culture to make it nearly impossible for them to return.

Myanmar's armed forces are accused not just of burning Muslim villages with the help of Buddhist mobs, but of carrying out massacres, rapes and widespread looting.

Aerial photographs of leveled villages in northern Rakhine State were first made public Feb. 9 when the European Union's ambassador to Myanmar, Kristian Schmidt, posted images taken from an aircraft of what he described as a "vast bulldozed area" south of the town of Maungdaw.

Satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe indicates at least 28 villages or hamlets were leveled by bulldozers and other machinery in a 30-mile radius around Maungdaw between December and February; on some of the cleared areas, construction crews had erected new buildings or housing structures and helipads.
 
A similar analysis by Human Rights Watch on Friday said at least 55 villages have been affected so far.

The images offer an important window into what is effectively a part of Myanmar that is largely sealed off to the outside world. Myanmar bars independent media access to the state.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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