Rakhine Skies: Remote Sensing, Human Rights, and the Rohingya Crisis

Abstract

The role of remote sensing (RS) in the investigation of major human rights violations has begun to significantly increase. Although geographers have focused on expanding the technical application of RS in documenting such horrors, there has been limited interest in exploring the complex ways RS is being used by international human rights (IHR) actors in the field. This article argues that the ongoing crisis in Rakhine State, Myanmar, has become a watershed moment for the IHR community as it begins to fully embrace the use of RS across multiple levels of intergovernmental and nongovernmental investigative processes. As such, the application of an inherently geographic process in the coconstruction of rights-based narratives regarding the Rohingya people needs to be explored in terms of how RS is understood by IHR actors, the ways in which it is being used, and the geopolitical impact it is having.

遥感在研究重大侵犯人权行为中的作用已开始显著加强。尽管地理学者一直致力于拓展遥感在记录此类恐怖事件的技术应用，但很少研究国际人权（IHR）人员所采用的复杂的遥感方法。本文认为，缅甸若开邦（Rakhine State）的持续危机已成为IHR的分水岭，IHR在多层次的政府间和非政府调查中开始充分采用遥感技术。因此，为了探讨地理过程在共建基于权力的罗兴亚人叙述中的应用，需要从IHR如何理解遥感、遥感的使用方式以及遥感的地缘政治影响等方面着手。

El rol de la teledetección (RS) en la investigación de nefastas violaciones de los derechos humanos ha comenzado a incrementarse significativamente. Aunque los geógrafos se han concentrado en extender la aplicación técnica de la RS para documentar tales horrores, ha habido escaso interés por explorar los modos complejos como la RS es usada en el campo por los actores internacionales de los derechos humanos (IHR). En este artículo se argumenta que la crisis que actualmente afecta al estado de Rakhine, en Myanmar, se ha convertido en un momento crucial para la comunidad de los IHR, que comienza a adoptar plenamente el uso de la RS en múltiples niveles de los procesos investigativos intergubernamentales y no gubernamentales. En esas condiciones, la aplicación de un proceso inherentemente geográfico en la coconstrucción de narrativas basadas en los derechos, en relación con el pueblo rohingya, necesita explorarse en términos de cómo es entendida la RS por los actores de los IHR, las maneras como se está usando y el impacto geopolítico que su uso está generando.

Key Words:

• human rights
• Myanmar
• remote sensing
• Rohingya

关键词:

• 人权
• 缅甸
• 遥感
• 罗兴亚

Palabras clave:

• derechos humanos
• Myanmar
• rohingya
• teledetección

Notes

Notes

1 It is important to acknowledge how privileged I have been to have unfettered access to the people, documents, and working processes involved in this study. As is appropriate when dealing with a small, niche community of experts, all direct quotations have been anonymized.

2 Stemming from this period, the international community began to develop the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine (Evans and Sahnoun 2002), as well as establishing the ICC—both expressions of a developing international vision that sought to shift focus from the exclusive security of the state to the security of the people of the state. These developments were taking place as the nascent private corporate RS industry was beginning to expand, allowing for a parallel development in both RS capacity and the desire to use it for IHR purposes.

3 For a comprehensive analysis of the geopolitical role of RS over North Korea, please see Shim (2014).

4 One of the key founders of SSP, Raymond, along with the Peace Research Institute Oslo researcher Sandvik, provided an important exploration of the implications (and limitations) of technology for mass atrocity work, and the idea of an ambient protective effect in Sandvik and Raymond (2017)

5 The earliest use of RS for IHR purposes over Myanmar as a whole date from a 2007 to 2009 offensive in Karen and Shan states in eastern Myanmar (see Pinholster 2010).

6 AI rescinded Suu Kyi’s title in 2018, during the aftermath of the 2017 military campaign against the Rohingya, and one year before her appearance before the ICJ.

7 The senior analyst for HRW was able to reconstruct the “analysis” done on the aerial images provided by the Myanmar authorities. As became quickly apparent through the use of high-resolution satellite imagery, not only did the photographs not prove any inaccuracies in the original HRW reporting; they actually highlighted previously unknown areas of destruction.

8 Clearly, the costs associated with RS products still function as barriers to smaller groups that might want to perform their own investigations. The advent of digital RS platforms (e.g., Google Earth), however, allows even the smallest organizations to review and use imagery. In essence, satellite imagery has now rapidly transferred from the exclusive purview of the state, into the varied levels and capacities of a broad cross-section of civil society actors. This is sometimes referred to as the “democratization of space” and has been alternatively praised and cautioned against, as access becomes more readily available for a multitude of actors (see Baiocchi and Welser 2015).

9 The severely limited resources available to INGO investigators mean that negotiating and maintaining a relationship with companies such as DG and Planet is an essential element in the increasing use of RS. Both AI and HRW have long-standing agreements with a variety of private corporate RS providers to have (relatively) inexpensive access to their back catalogues of imagery data.

10 Speaking on the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 (9/11) attacks, High Commissioner Al- Hussein began his remarks with a reflection on the skies above Manhattan on 9/11: “I remember the piercing clarity of the sky we all awoke to that day. So blue and clear, it nudged our spirits upward as we headed to work.” He went on to suggest that “the breathtaking acceleration of technological change is our blue sky”—a symbol of hope and potential, but also something that needs to be explored and not just blithely accepted. The technologically enhanced skies above Rakhine State are, in my opinion, an important example of this idea.

11 As a case in point, within days of the overthrow of Suu Kyi’s government in February 2021, CNN ran a pointed piece titled “Satellite Images Reveal Defiance in Myanmar streets” (Walsh 2021), covering the growing protest movement calling for her release and the return of a democratically elected government.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James R. Walker

JAMES R. WALKER is a Visiting Scholar with the Institute of Political Science, Friedrich–Alexander University Erlangen–Nürnberg, Erlangen 91054, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]. His research incorporates critical geopolitics, science and technology studies, and international practice theory approaches to the adoption and integration of technology by nonstate and nontraditional actors in a human rights context.