Myanmar army razed Rohingya villages to build 'outposts'

After the 2017 expulsion of the Muslim minority Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the military destroyed villages and mosques and repurposed their lands for security outposts, according to a UN-backed investigation released on Monday.

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Violence against the Rohingya escalated dramatically in August 2017 when Myanmar’s military launched an operation in response to militant attacks, driving out hundreds of thousands from their homes in the coastal state.

Some 1.3 million Rohingya refugees now live in densely packed camps in Bangladesh, following the military operation that the United Nations later described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

“Myanmar authorities systematically destroyed Rohingya villages, mosques, cemeteries and farmland. They had knowledge of Rohingya land rights and tenure through official records,” said the report by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar.