Two sets of high-definition images of Myanmar taken from outer space: both are shot in the morning, both show the same villages populated by Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state. The first set, collected from 2014, displays a small collection of homes where the virtually stateless minority has settled. The buildings, lying between trees and set back from dirt roads, number more than 100. In the second set of images, taken in the past two months, the homes have vanished, and all that remains is square patches of burnt earth.
Provided by Human Rights Watch, the images reveal 430 buildings that have been destroyed in three different villages, and support the claim from a United Nations official that Myanmar is seeking the “ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya” from its territory.
After nine border officers were killed on 9 October, the region’s Muslim minority – already excluded, impoverished and persecuted – has once again fallen victim to a sharp increase in targeted violent attacks. Over the past two months, around 10,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh and, according to Amnesty International, eyewitness accounts from those refugees suggest that “Myanmar’s security forces, led by the military”, are “torching hundreds of homes”. (Courtesy of theguardian.com)
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