World must step in to end slaughter of Rohingya

News about the ongoing slaughter of Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has taken a turn for the worse as new satellite imagery showed hundreds of buildings burning. 
According to New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) imagery from the Rohingya Muslim village of Chein Khar Li in Rathedaung township shows 700 buildings burned and a near-total destruction of the village.
“This new satellite imagery shows the total destruction of a Muslim village, and prompts serious concerns that the level of devastation in northern Rakhine State may be far worse than originally thought,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at HRW. 
“Yet this is only one of 17 sites that we’ve located where burnings have taken place. Independent monitors are needed on the ground to urgently uncover what’s going on.”
The satellite imagery was recorded on August 31. The imagery shows that 99 per cent of the village was destroyed. 
HRW pointed out that the damage signature is consistent with fire, including the presence of large burn marks and destroyed tree cover.
Previously published data collected by HRW indicated burnings taking place at 17 separate sites across the northern Rakhine State between August 25 and 30. 
Those burnings followed a series of coordinated attacks by ethnic Rohingya militants of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on the morning of August 25 against dozens of Burmese government police stations and checkpoints, government offices, and an army base.
In the final analysis, the scope and scale of the fire destruction suggests that burnings either were done with lots of people or over a significant period of time.
For decades, ever since the government of Myanmar decided to deny the Rohingya citizenship, the people were slowly persecuted, starting with being denied the basic right of movement from village to village. 
This strategy also confines them in ways that denies them social mobility in the country, forcing many to take to the high seas and risk their lives. 
Everybody knew and warned that Burma was setting the stage for the creation of an armed group to fight back. The country has many such groups representing each ethnic group. Some group, such as the Karen and the Shan, have more than one armed group fighting either for an independent country or autonomy. 
Nobody in their right mind would believe the ARSA militants were to blame for these fires. The government has not provided any evidence to support this claim and they continue to deny independent observers and journalists access to these locations. 
The United Nations-appointed commissioners of the Fact Finding Missions have also been denied visa by the government that calls itself a victim of terrorism, in reference to the ARSA. 
As it stands, this government of Aung San Suu Kyi has no credibility and the international community, including Asean, has a moral obligation to step in and end this ethnic cleansing exercise by Burmese government troops who have shown in the past how low they could stoop.
The Karen, Mon, Shan, Kachin and Rohingya villagers – all have come under their bombardment and senseless shelling. Their women have been raped by Burmese government soldiers who adopted such practices as a weapon of war. 
Such tactics not only devastated the female victims, but also put their men, combatants or not, to shame for not being able to protect them. 
Thailand’s non-inference policy will come with a price in the form of thousands of refugees flooding its territory. 
Worse, there have been reports that the Thai government may be helping Myanmar officials with intelligence sharing. Border towns, such as Mae Sot, have come under heavy monitoring for “Islamist” activities. 
If this is true, it would be an absolute shame for the Kingdom for lending a hand to a bloody regime that has little respect for human rights, uses rape as weapon of war and mobilises its own citizens to join them in this madness that has no end in sight.