After weeks of fierce protests, Burma was on Friday completely isolated from the rest of the world. The military junta severed international telephone lines, closed down Internet cafes and Internet service providers for web sites that were the only true source of information about the violent smothering of demonstrations. The latest reports cite thousands of monks “sealed” in monasteries, an unknown number of victims, anarchy in urban centres, destroyed villages and suburbs in flames.

In the midst of complete darkness, a sliver of light comes from American scientists who conducted an analysis of satellite images taken from above Burma in the past year that reveal the causes of the protests and the true colours of the military junta.

The analysis conducted on the Internet site of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) confirms that human rights had been violated at 25 out of 70 locations from which scarce news came from about control and vengeance against the population.

An AAAS researcher, Lars Bromley, explains that the comparison of satellite photos in the period of a year revealed clear signs of military activities.

For example, a human rights group reported in late 2006 that the construction of 33 military campuses started in the Papun district, as well as that a mercenary army had started displacing the population by destroying villages, burning plantations and destroying anything in their path. The credibility of the scarce reports were confirmed by satellite images that on April 22 of this year clearly showed numerous “scars” in the lush vegetation.

- Eighteen of the locations showed evidence consistent with destroyed or damaged villages. We found evidence of expanded military camps in four other locations as well as multiple possibly relocated villages, and we documented growth in one refugee camp on the Thai border- Bromley said.

Militarist state

Burma has been a militarist state since 1962 since conflicts between the military junta and the National League for Democracy whose leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is the only winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who has been in prison for more than a decade, without the possibility of addressing the world or local public.

At the beginning of the year, the American senator from California, Danne Feinstein, offered an excellent resume of the insufferable situation in today’s Myanmar, describing Burma as "a land where 3,000 villages have been destroyed, 1,300 political prisoners are in jail, 70,000 child soldiers have been forcibly recruited, and over 500,000 people are internally displaced.” American Ambassador Jackie W. Sanders completed the frightful image stating that army troops were systematically raping women, especially members of minorities (Shan, Karen, Karenni) and that the burning of villages were followed by similar horror as our and neighbouring territories suffered during the Homeland War.

Human rights under a high-tech magnifying glass 

Commenting the AAAS report, Bromley said that the flight path of the satellite had been corrected and its lenses were now directed at Burma’s urban centres. At a moment when all ties with the country are severed, these images, if we get them, will be one of a few available ways of getting insight and understanding the degree of military deployment in key towns, Bromley explained.

The AAAS analysis, which offers a very detailed report from the field, which you can see HERE, is the first use of satellite imagery with the purpose of documenting human rights violations in Burma. The AAAS, the largest association of scientists in the world, earlier used satellite photographs to identify abuses in Darfur and Zimbabwe.