Amnesty International identified burned villages from satellite images and video footage of airstrikes and shelling
A human rights group has found that Myanmar military deployed deadly airstrikes and killed civilians amid intensified conflict between the army and insurgents in the country’s northwest Rakhine and Chin states.
Amnesty International identified burned villages from satellite images and video footage of airstrikes and shelling carried by the Myanmar military.
Conflict between the military and the Arakan Army (AA), a rebel group seeking more autonomy for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin states, has been ongoing since last January.
Under a total internet blackout, the Myanmar military is conducting indiscriminate airstrikes, burning villages, and arbitrarily detaining and torturing people as armed conflicts in Rakhine and Chin States escalate, according to a new Amnesty International report.
Ming Yu Hah, deputy regional director at Amnesty, told VICE News that the use of air power has become “disturbingly common as the military pulls out all the stops” to quell the AA. In May alone, 30 civilians were killed or injured in the conflict.
An estimated 10,000 people have fled their homes recently due to the violence and warnings of advancing military operations, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Through more than two dozen remote interviews with Rakhine and Chin people, Amnesty found that the Tatmadaw’s allegedly indiscriminate use of air power has inflicted massive human suffering.
One displaced person in Minbya Township said soldiers burned down 10 houses and a school, killing two villagers. An ethnic Rakhine man said he had tried to return to his own village of Sein Nyin Wa after being displaced, only to find it had been reduced to ash.
Though Amnesty said it was unable to directly document similar abuses by the Arakan Army due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and limited access, reports indicate that they continue.☁
