Arakan News Agency
Marzuki Darusman, head of the UN investigation team into the violence in Myanmar, said the satellite images showed the destruction of 319 villages in whole or in part as part of Myanmar’s “cleansing” operation against Arakan Muslims on Aug. 25.
In a speech at the 37th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, Marzuki Darusman said that some 600 Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand had confirmed that the Myanmar army had committed acts of violence against them.
The United Nations investigation team had evidence of Myanmar’s involvement in acts of violence against the Rohingya, and the evidence included photographs taken on the ground and satellite images showing the destruction of some 319 villages in whole or in part.
The Rohingya Muslims have strong evidence that they have been subjected to systematic violence, gang rape, sexual violence and various abuses. In addition, the Myanmar government is preventing international organizations from reaching Arakan province and refuses to initiate an investigation into the situation in the province.
“We have many evidence that Myanmar has committed acts of murder against infants and children, and we have information about the arrest of a large number of young people in Myanmar and the practice of rapes against girls. “We are in the process of identifying those responsible for these abuses.”
He noted that measures were needed to shelter hundreds of thousands of Muslims and provide security guarantees for the return of the Rohingya Muslims to their homes, otherwise it would be impossible to return them.
According to UN data, 688,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Arakan province to the neighboring state of Bangladesh from 25 August 2017 to 27 January 2018, following attacks by Myanmar army and extremist Buddhist militias, described by international organizations As a “campaign of ethnic cleansing”.
As a result of these attacks, at least 9,000 Rohingya people were killed in the same period, according to the international organization Doctors Without Borders.
On November 23, 2017, Bangladesh and Myanmar signed an agreement on the return of Rohingya refugees to their areas, but has not yet entered into force.
The agreement provides for some almost impossible conditions for verifying the residence of persons, who he describes as “displaced from Myanmar” rather than using the widely known description as “the Rohingya ethnic group”.
