Yangon (Myanmar): Satellite imagery that shows a village burning in a conflict zone in western Myanmar lends credence to reports that houses were set ablaze there by government soldiers, a major human rights group said on Tuesday.
Human Rights Watch said in a statement that an investigation is necessary to determine who was responsible for setting at least 200 buildings on fire on May 16 in the village of Let Kar in Rakhine state’s Mrauk-U township.
The burning of villages was a tactic used on a large scale by the military in Rakhine in 2017, according to investigations carried out separately by the United Nations and human rights groups.
The tactic was used at the time against villages housing civilians from the Muslim Rohingya minority community.
Since January last year, Rakhine has been the scene of an increasingly fierce armed conflict between the government and the Arakan Army, a guerrilla force of the Rakhine ethnic minority seeking greater autonomy for the state.
The government recently officially declared the Arakan Army a terrorist organization.
Online media sympathetic to the Rakhine cause blame Myanmar’s military for setting the fires in Let Kar, while the military has blamed the guerrillas. Access to the area by qualified independent observers is discouraged.
Human Rights Watch said most of the village’s residents abandoned the area over a year ago when fighting increased.
Human Rights Watch said that a satellite photo taken on the morning of May 16 shows no signs of damage in Let Kar, but that remote imaging by an environmental satellite detected extensive fires burning there in the afternoon.
It estimated that at least 200 buildings were burned, and said the imagery was consistent with accounts provided by witnesses on the ground.
A villager contacted by phone told The Associated Press that soldiers opened fire with heavy weapons at the village’s entrance, and soon afterwards fire broke out in the center and southern parts of the village as gunfire continued.
They left Let Kar at around 4:30 pm. When they left, the whole village was burning. (AP)
