Villages were still being damaged as late as 2 December, contradicting government assurances, says Human Rights WatchSatellite images show that dozens of Rohingya villages were burned the week Myanmar signed an agreement with Bangladesh to repatriate hundreds of thousands of refugees, Human Rights Watch has claimed. Bangladesh and Myanmar signed an agreement on 23 November to begin the process of repatriating some of the estimated 655,000 refugees who fled Myanmar in the past four months. The first repatriations under the agreement are due in January, a timetable that human rights groups say is unrealistic and could expose the Muslim minority group to continued persecution, internment or possible forced resettlement. “The satellite imagery shows what the Burmese army denies: that Rohingya villages continue to be destroyed. On Monday, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said he could not “rule out that possibility that acts of genocide have been committed” in Rakhine state in recent months.

Source: The Guardian December 18, 2017 14:01 UTC