You're listening to a stage talk titled Monitoring
Violence in Myanmar with Bellingcat's Pooja Chaudhuri.
Pooja reminded us of the complexity of reporting
on a region such as Myanmar and gave advice based
on her own experiences researching Rakhine states.
You can find links to all the resources mentioned
on the talk in the podcast description. This
talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Maher, on Thursday
the 28th of May, 2026, in the Bellingcat Discord
server. I think we should get started. Welcome
to this week's State Talk. Today we're joined
by my wonderful colleague and talented researcher,
Pooja Chaudhuri. Pooja specialises in human rights
and conflict reporting. For the last three years,
she's been monitoring developments in Myanmar
via open sources, plotting evidence of the destruction
of villages and reporting on airstrikes and violence.
In her latest, published yesterday, she identified
115 villages in Rakhine State as partially or
completely destroyed since the February 2021
military coup that overthrew Myanmar's democratically
elected government. Today we'll hear more about
that work, the tools, methods and skills involved
in ongoing monitoring and why open source research
can be so valuable in regions facing conflict
and upheaval like Myanmar. We will have time
for audience questions. You can place your questions
in the chat accessible on the right -hand corner
of your screen. But please remember, especially
if this is your first stage talk, that this is
being audio recorded for our podcast series.
So if you don't want me to mention your username,
please add that as a note in your question and
I will absolutely avoid doing that. Okay. Pooja,
tell us a little bit more about your investigation,
please. Like Charlie said, I've been looking
at Myanmar for a few years now. But just to clarify,
it's a big country. Different regions, different
states have their own issues. And I am not an
expert on Myanmar in any way, but I have focused
the past few months looking at Rakhine. And the
issues that Rakhine faces would be different
from other states in Myanmar. because the country
has a lot of armed ethnic groups trying to fight
the military and trying to gain control of their
respective states. The focus of my story was
looking at what happened in the last five years
in Rakhine since the 2021 coup. And it's already
reported a lot that the military does airstrikes.
and tries to bomb civilian areas as well. But
what I wanted to see is what happens to villages
and towns once they are attacked? Is there redevelopment?
If the armed groups are taking control of a certain
area, what happens to that area? Are people able
to return back? And also, do settlements get
completely erased once they are bombed? lots
of questions I had while trying to do this research.
It's very difficult to find answers to most of
these questions because of the tight grip of
the military in Myanmar and the tight grip of
the Arakanami in areas that it controls. To briefly
tell everyone about what is happening in Rakhine
is... So the military is fighting this ethnic
armed group called the Arakan Army. Ethnic armed
groups are based in different states in the whole
of the country, and Arakan Army is the one that
is based in Rakhine. Why I looked specifically
at Rakhine is for two reasons. One is that Arakan
Army has been able to take over most of the state
from the military. Rakhine has 17 townships and
the Arakanami right now controls 14 of those
townships. So there are three which are not in
control of Arakanami yet. And the armed group
has vowed to take over the state by next year.
Whether or not that will happen, time will tell.
But a lot of the fighting currently is concentrated
in the townships that the Arakanami or AA hasn't
been able to take over. So because of the progress
that the AA has made in Rakhine, I wanted to
look at it. And the second was the civilians
in Rakhine, mainly the Rohingya, face attacks
from both sides. So both from the military and
from the AA. And why that is, is because the
military does forced recruitment of Rohingya
to fight on its behalf. And what happens is that
if an area is attacked by the military, along
with Rohingya militia, there are retaliation
attacks from the Arakanami. And then they target
Rohingya villages and Rohingya towns. So the
civilians face attacks from both sides. And this
has also been reported since the military started
losing a lot of territory to the Arakanami. they
increased the force conscription of Rohingya.
And in 2024, which we also reported on this attack
that happened in a township called Bhutidong.
And Bhutidong is one of the two townships that
has the largest Rohingya population of the country.
And this township was first attacked by the military
and Rohingya militants and then in retaliation,
the Arakanami then attack the township. And if
you see satellite imagery of lots of areas of
the main town, which shares the name of the township,
Puthidong, and neighboring villages, you'll see
that a lot of it just looks burned. So this is
what I wanted to focus on. I wanted to find out
how many villages have been destroyed, both by
the AA and the military, although Because reporting
is so difficult in Myanmar for a lot of villages,
you will not be able to tell who did the attack.
You can make good assumptions based on the kind
of attacks, because if it's a heavily civilian
area, the military is more prone to doing attacks.
The military also has more air power than a Rakan
army. So there can be informed assumptions about
who carried on an attack, depending on when it
took place and what it looks like on satellite
imagery. But the story does not say for a lot
of the villages who did the attacks because there
is no reporting. So how I found areas that have
had large scale destruction is the methodology.
It took me a while to figure out the methodology
because you know, due to lack of reporting, and
I wasn't sure where to look at. And it's very
rural, the villages are tiny, like, you know,
some have like 50 homes, some have 10 homes,
some have 80 homes, and they're very spread out.
So it's difficult to know where you should be
looking at. And there is lack of updated satellite
imaging. So the sources that I refer to were,
one was Accolade, which has conflict data, and
it's very easy to use. I can show how I used
Acklid. So you can download data from Acklid.
So when you download the data, it will give you
a CSV file, which would also have coordinates.
It will not have coordinates of the exact point
where an attack took place, but it would have
coordinates of the area. So if a village was
attacked, it would have coordinates of the village
that was attacked. And then you can, if you have,
if the tag was big enough, you know, you'll be
able to see the destruction and satellite imagery.
If not, then there could be video or images of
that village being attacked and then you can
do geolocation. So I used Ackler, I used NASA
firms. If the fire is big enough, then it would
show up on NASA firms and then you get an area
of where, you know, fire was detected and then
you can see if the destruction was also captured,
if it was not enough to be captured on satellite
image. The third was looking at just news reports
and including on social media. There are media
organizations that just operate out of Facebook
and just checking what they have been reporting
on. And of course, the fourth was just lurking
in planet and I spent hours and hours just like
looking at different townships and just like
seeing which one has the most updated satellite
imagery and then just being sort of like a satellite
yourself and trying to see what this area looks
like versus this area looks like. So that's how
I got the data for the story. And what I found,
I think the most interesting finding in the story
was from this township called Mangdao, which
is next to Butidong. And Mangdao and Butidong
has the most number of Rohingya population in
the country. And I saw that there were villages
that I could see on planet on Mangdao. And I
could not find the name of those villages, some
of those villages. on the township map that the
UN produces. And the UN map is based on data
from the Myanmar government. So technically those
maps are from, those are government maps, those
are official maps. And I saw that some of these
villages, while I can see that they are marked
on the planet and they look destroyed, they aren't
marked on the maps. So I saw that then what is
happening potentially is that settlements get
destroyed and then they get officially removed
from sources. And I spoke to experts about what
could be the reason behind removing names of
villages from maps. And the experts told me it
could be to just erase the identity of the local
population there. There has been some reporting
on this when it happened after the 2017 violence
in Rakhine, the Rohingya genocide. And experts
then said that it's so that people can't go back
to their homes. It's not just that the village
has been completely flattened, but its trace
has been removed officially. So where do people
go back to? So I think that was one interesting
finding and there could be a bigger story there.
Like I did not spend too much time on finding
out all the villages that have been removed officially
from maps, but I did find six or seven of them
that are no longer from Wangdao that are no longer
in the latest maps that was released by the UN,
which is from 2024. Yeah, so that was mainly
what the focus of the story was. And it also
speaks about what is currently happening in the
townships that are not in the control of the
Arakanami. Data for one of the townships wasn't
available, but the two townships for which data
was available is Situwe and Chaupiu. Situwe is
also the capital. And so the name of the city
is Sittwe city, which is the capital and it's
in the township, which is also called Sittwe.
And so a lot of the fighting is now focused in
Sittwe. And what we found is that surrounding
the city, the villages that surround the city,
they have been cleared and a lot of defense structures
have been built in place of these villages. and
the expert that we spoke to said that this is
so that it becomes difficult for the Arakanami
to advance into the city. Sittwe also holds thousands
of people who have taken refuge in the city fleeing
from other parts of Rakhine. So taking over Sittwe
would mean whether the Arakanami is able to take
over or whether the military is able to retain
control. It doesn't look good for the civilian
population there because whatever side wins or
loses, there is going to be loss of life. And
Situwe is difficult for the Arakanami to take
over because it's surrounded by water on three
sides and the Arakanami does not have naval capabilities.
Same with Chaopiu. It's an island. it's going
to be difficult and challenging for their economy
to advance there because of lack of naval capabilities.
These areas, experts told us, also has jamming
technology. So our economy, they do have some
drones, but it's possible that the military would
jam them. And both Situ Wei and Chaopiao are
very important because they have foreign investments,
both India and China have. invested in infrastructure
projects there. And if the Rakanami is able to
take over both those regions, it would also give
them some diplomatic advantage, you know, because
then this is an arm -glue which will be able
to negotiate potentially with governments of
neighboring countries. So lots of important issues
happening in Rakhine and we'll see what happens
next year. If the EA is able to take over, it
would be the first armed group that has taken
over a capital. When I say it weighs the capital,
it's the capital of Rakhine. It's the capital
of the state of the country. Yeah, so that was
mainly the research and my colleague and co -author,
Miguel. made a scroll for the story just to explain
what's happening and show visually how the areas
look. And even if a certain area has a destruction
which is large enough, we don't need high -resolution
satellite image. You can still tell with mid
-resolution satellite image. Google Earth, in
this case, was very useful because Google Earth
had a lot of imagery. The timeline was big enough.
It was five years. So Google Earth also had a
lot of imagery that we could rely on. And the
story also includes images from Google Earth.
That was quite a long brief for the story. No,
I appreciate it. It's really useful to hear it
from your perspective and hear the methodology
as well and the obstacles that you've faced.
I've put in the chats, the links that were mentioned,
including the link to yesterday's article, the
2024 article that was mentioned, ACLED, NASA
firms, which you mentioned. And I've also put
in links to spaces within this server where you
can talk about some of the things mentioned,
including the specific munitions and the region.
So please do check out those spaces if you want
to continue the conversation here. I wanted to
start off the question and answer. portion of
this talk. And again, please feel free to put
in the chat if you have any questions for Pooja.
I wanted to ask what makes reporting and verification
particularly difficult in that region? You wrote
in the article that evidence is often slow to
emerge. How does that delay and affect verification
workflows and public understanding? Yeah, so
I think accountability becomes difficult because
there's only so much you can do with open source
reporting. The Human Rights Watch recently published,
I think last week published a report on what
happened in this village in Rakhine, which is
in Bhutidong. I'm not going to try to pronounce
the village, just the name of the village. But
according to Human Rights Watch investigation,
170 Rohingya men, women and children were killed
by the Rakanami last year in April, May. I briefly
spoke about what happened in Bhutanang in April,
May last year. And this village was also part
of at least 40 villages that were targeted then.
And I mean, we knew what had happened. We knew
that the first attack The township was first
attacked by the military and Rohingya militants.
And later on, in retaliation attacks, the Arabian
army just burned down large parts of the township.
But there was denial from the Arabian army that
they did not target civilian areas. They said
that they targeted military soldiers and they
targeted Rohingya militants. But it took more
than a year for this report to come out because
people who were displaced, the Human Rights Watch
spoke to them in Bangladesh when they reached
the shelters. Lots of Rohingya asylum seekers
are in Bangladesh. So they did ground reporting,
they spoke to witnesses, and then they were able
to... There's satellite imagery of the village
that shows that... shows that it has been attacked.
But there were no confirmed, you know, witness
reports. And so it takes a lot of time for accountability,
some sort of accountability to happen. And that
is, like I said, so only so much you can do with
open source reporting. The way a village or a
town is attacked gives some ideas, idea about
who is behind the attack. And there is some reporting
that happens by, you know, tiny media organizations
that still exist. But a lot of journalists from
Myanmar are in exile and a lot of them operate
from Thailand. So most journalists or a lot of
journalists that are reporting on Rakhine or
in Myanmar or sorry, on Myanmar, they're doing
it not from the country. And so reporting just
takes time. And it's not an area which is covered
a lot by satellite imagery. So the reports are
sort of delayed. What is happening right now,
you may be able to report on it a few months
from now, once the satellite images are more
updated. But I think one good way to report on
it is to, again, look at the overview. of what's
happening by looking at data from Accolade. Like
how I would research Myanmar, Accolade would
do it in the same way. Like refer to news reports,
refer to social media and try to collect the
data and give it in a more organized way. There
aren't links to the reports, but you can look
them up. They have like description of what happened
in a certain village. So it will give you an
idea of what's happening. But yeah, it's a difficult
region to report on just because it's under -reported
and it's not covered as much by satellite image.
But if you want to, say, report on what happened
to the villages that were destroyed during the
Rohingya genocide in 2017, Google Earth would
be good enough for that reporting. You can go
and look at imagery on Google Earth and try to
see what happened to those villages. Is there
redevelopment? Is there barren land? Like I said,
in Situwe, the military cleared villages to build
defense installations. Are there defense installations
in those villages that were destroyed back in
2017? What do they look like now? Are they still
on maps? So lots of things that you can do, going
back in time and seeing what is the condition
right now. So I think one way to report on it
is just it requires a bit of, I think, patience.
It's because you don't have as much as you would
want in terms of satellite image. But there are
other avenues. And sometimes a disruption is
large enough to. look at mid resolution or low
resolution, which is more updated satellite image
than high resolution. I guess the difficulty
of reporting on this region really highlights
why it's important to report on this region because
there's probably less eyes and less people attempting
to do it. And that doesn't mean that these areas
don't deserve that kind of investigation. In
regards to the data that you've been talking
about, we had a question earlier about removal
of data. You mentioned that one of the townships
you didn't have data for, was that data removed
and what kinds of evidence tend to disappear
fastest from your experience? What should researchers
prioritize preserving when researching Rakhine
State and in other areas in Myanmar? The data
for the township that was not available, it's
called, the approximate pronunciation is Manong.
It's a very small island and I don't think it
has a lot of villages, very few. So because it's
an island, it's not covered that much by satellite
image. There's less reporting. It's kind of,
it's sort of isolated. And because of how small
it is, I think that's probably why the data is
not available. When I say data not available,
I mean, actually didn't have data for that township.
It's possible, multiple reasons, maybe nothing
actually happened there. That's why the data
is not there. Or, you know, like, it's just not
there because it's kind of isolated. I don't
think there was any possible removal of data
in that township. It's just... It's just not
there. It's very small. Your second question
about what should be preserved? I think one thing
that I noticed when I was doing this research
is I was looking at the township maps that are
released by the UN and I was looking at the 2024
maps. And I did want to do a comparison between
how the map maps looked whenever they released
the previous map. Probably, I think they released
it in 2021. But I couldn't find those maps. So
right now, the 2024 maps are there. It would
be a good idea to archive them, save them locally,
so that when the new maps are released, you can
then refer to the new map and see what is the
change in those two maps. And then that might
be given an idea. of what has been, the villages
that have been removed. And then you can see
that, okay, what happened here? Why are these
villages removed? And it would be a fairly simple
investigation, right? Like if you have names
of all the villages from 2024, and then you have
names of all the villages from 2021, you can
just compare and see what names do not appear.
And then you can go and check what happened to
those villages. So I think... That is something,
there are some previous maps that are available,
you know, like research gate or like some other
websites like that, but it's not, you can't search
them on what is the name of the website. It's
called the MIMO, the Myanmar information management
unit. I mean, I can send the link to you. This
is where you can look at all the maps, township
maps, but they don't have. it's like a PDF of
a map. So you still have to like see, like open
up Google Earth or something, or like plan it
and try to see where you're looking at. And if
you have the tech skill of converting, which
Miguel did for my story, is if you can convert
the PDF into some sort of GeoJSON or something,
and then try to like open it up on QGIS or some
other software that lets you open GeoJSON files,
then you could potentially use the PDF maps to
just get the coordinates. How I was doing it
was very, very time consuming. I was like, okay,
so the main town is here and then there is a
village here. And I was like tracking where the
river is flowing and then seeing, okay, it's
near this... you know, this village name appears
next to this river. So I was like going on Google
Earth and trying to find the river. And it was
very time consuming, but you could make it easier
for yourself if you have some tech skills. Um,
and, uh, yeah, but I guess do archive the maps
and save them locally if you're interested in
Myanmar. Get archiving folks. Uh, thank you for
that tip. Really important to highlight. you
know, where the gaps in data are and what could
possibly be important that you might not think
about immediately. Your piece can combine satellite
imagery, firms, fire data, accurate data, social
media, local reporting, as you said. How do you
decide when there's enough cooperation to confidently
identify a village as completely destroyed? Like,
how do you make that editorial call that the
villages that you're reporting on are completely
wiped off the map, other than their erasure from
these government maps. How do you visually tell
when something is, how do you visually and confidently
say that these villages have been impacted that
badly? Yeah, there's no confident way to say
unless something has been officially removed
because that it's possible that a village was
destroyed and then rebuilt later. Unless you
have the latest available satellite image, you
don't exactly know what happened there. For a
lot of the villages, we did have latest satellite
image, so we were able to tell that currently
these villages are destroyed. But I think I've
written in the story as well that At least in
five villages, we saw that there was signs of
reconstruction. It's difficult to tell whether
the reconstruction was for civilian purposes
or otherwise. They didn't look like defense structures.
They did look like buildings. But again, it's
tough. It's tough to exactly say what happened
somewhere, unless you have latest satellite image.
And how do you detect something? that looks destroyed.
I can share my screen. Let me share my screen.
While you're getting that up, perhaps also while
you're sharing the screen, it would be really
interesting to understand, maybe for people who
aren't used to highlighting when military fortifications
have appeared in Saas -Wa -Imji, what indicators
in Saas -Wa -Imji tell you that a civilian settlement
has become a military position as well? that
might be something interesting to look at while
you're, while you're sharing your screen, if
that's possible. Yeah. Let me, let me talk about
the military. That's a good question. Like if
you Google like say trenches from trenches satellite,
because Myanmar is not unique in this. A lot
of areas have military installations and structures
built, right? So if you just like familiarize
yourself with like how military installations
would look like then you when you look at a satellite
image you're like okay you know that that is
probably what I'm looking at like for instance
like this those are like sort of like trenches
and this is what it would look like on satellite
image like zig zigzag lines or you know like
something like this has it too like something
which look has like some sort of a pattern and
When you're looking at like I think all of us
have looked at it looked at you know how a place
looks which has like some sort of a Human settlement
right there would be houses there would be buildings
When that is replete by what you know odd patterns
you know that something happened there were clearance
operations or like something has happened there,
but the easiest like way to familiarize yourself
is just like Google and see how other people
have reported on it. I didn't know what trenches
looked like. And I wasn't sure what I was looking
at. So this is what I did. And I saw that, OK,
if there are structures like that, these are
probably like military installations. And then
you will also be able to see bunkers and things
like that. So in this story, I'm just going to...
So this is Sitwe. This entire region is Sitwe,
the township. And this is Sitwe city, which is
the capital of Rakhine. And lots of villages
around the city, we saw that there were some
sort of clearance operations and they were replaced
by some of the villages were replaced by defense
installations, like this one. This village, this
is what it appeared intact in March 2024 Google
Earth image. And then later on, we saw that it
was destroyed. Now, another thing, when you're
looking at satellite image and you can see buildings
have been destroyed, you can sort of tell the
method used to destroy. This does not look like
some sort of aerial 500 pound bomb dropped because
then the vegetation would also be destroyed.
It would look more burnt. Here, you can see that
specifically the structures itself were destroyed.
These buildings have been destroyed. It almost
looks like they were destroyed one by one. You
can see that the nearby vegetation does not look
impacted. So you can tell that, okay, maybe this
was like targeted some sort of clearance operation.
So this is from 2025 Google Earth image. And
if you notice here on the side here, there is
nothing right now in 2024. And when I'm scrolling
to 2025, there is some sort of those exact lines
have appeared. So next to the village, there
has been some military installation. And this
is again from Google Earth, we saw trenches and
outposts being built. So something like this,
if you look at satellite image, this does not
look like a civilian development, development
for civil populations. So anything that looks
odd or stands out, looks kind of barren, where
there's some structures there, that could be
a hint that there has been some defense installations
there. And some of this you can also tell by
looking at low resolution satellite image. Again,
if it's large enough. This is low resolution
satellite image from planet. And you can see
that this village, you can just see vegetation.
If you were able to see buildings, you would
see like tiny white spots or something like that.
But nothing is visible in this village. So it's
a hint that it's destroyed. And next to them,
you can see some sort of lines built around those
villages. And that is also a hint that, okay,
there's some structures that has been built there.
So it's possible even with low resolution satellite
image to be able to tell sometimes that there
has been some construction that the military
has done. This is another village. And here the
village is almost replaced by defense installations.
You can see those zigzag lines on the side of
the villages. Instead of next to the village,
you can almost see that they are on top of the
village. So this is low resolution image, satellite
image, which compares two villages. This one,
which had the zigzag lines, and this one, which
does not. So you can also compare, even with
low resolution image, which villages have had
military development versus which hasn't had.
So even if you don't have access to high resolution
image, you can get some hint even with low resolution
image. Like this looks really different from
this village. This almost looks like barren land
with some greenery in it. But this one, you can
tell there are lines there. So it's possible
that there has been some development there. So
that is one way to detect what has happened after
a clearance operation happens, after human settlements
or civilian areas have been cleared or removed
or destroyed. This is another village where trenches
you can see are like all over the circumference
of the village. Okay. Hope that was helpful.
Really clear. And I just wanted to shout out
Miguel again, because even as a presentation
tool, that scrolly telly is super useful. And
if you're listening back on the podcast, everything
that Pooja just showed in this talk can be seen
and scrolled through by yourself on the article
that will be linked in the description. So do
check out there for some of those examples of
fortifications that she was just talking about.
We've been very careful in the article not to
attribute blame, but are there methods and open
source ways of identifying which potential armed
group could be responsible for some of these
attacks? Obviously, in terms of, we're not suggesting
you name them right now, but As there's multiple
armed actors operating in the same area, how
could you possibly identify who's at play in
these particular regions or states? Right. So
which armed group is going to be difficult? I
haven't looked at the whole country. If you're
looking at Myanmar, it's It's tough to report
on the entire region because there are so many
ethnic groups fighting the military. So I have
been focused on Rakhine. I would not be able
to talk about the rest of the country. If there
are large patterns of villages destroyed or the
military also destroys religious establishments
like... There is a state called Chin State, which
has a lot of churches, and the military has been
destroying churches as well. So if it's a broad
overview story like that, sure, there are some
hints that which group might have attacked a
certain area. You can check if the ethnic armed
group that you're looking at, whether or not
it has air power. If an area looks like it has
been destroyed by a bomb or something, if you
can see like a crater or something, you can tell
that, okay, this armed group does not have air
power, so potentially the military did this attack.
So that's one way of going about it. And armed
groups generally, like this is again... This
is not always true. We generally don't attack
civilian areas, at least in Rakhine. Their fight
is with the military. So if a military outpost
has been attacked, they attack police stations
as well. You know that the attack was by the
armed group. Now there are exceptions to this,
of course, because like I said, the Rohingya
population in Rakhine has been attacked both
by the military and by armed groups. The type
of attack is a good way to tell what has happened.
You can check if a particular township currently
is controlled by the military or is controlled
by the armed group, then you can tell who did
the attack. Because an expert also told us that
the military attacks villages or towns that it
has lost. leave an ungovernable region for the
armed group. You know, it's sort of like you
want to take this land from us, go ahead and
do that. You are not going to be able to govern
it because there's nothing left. It's bad enough
and there is no people left. So what are you
going to govern? So those are some hints into,
you know, telling what happened in a region or
in a specific area. But due to lack of reporting,
You cannot always conclusively tell what happened,
but that doesn't mean there's no reporting coming
out of Myanmar. There are smaller organizations
that are doing ground reporting. Witnesses, when
they, you know, human rights groups, when they
talk to them, you can tell what exactly happened.
Large scale destruction most likely would be
military of, you know, civilian areas. So those
are some things that give a hint about who may
have carried an attack. So it's really about
scale and also weaponry used, which is really,
really useful to note. I've also linked in the
chat your other report from last year on this
area following the earthquake ceasefire. So you
can have a read of that as well. We've got about
15 minutes left for questions, so please pop
them in the chat if you have any. I wanted to
quickly ask... Because this is a longitudinal
analysis, you've done it over a five year period.
Did you spot any significant patterns or perhaps
escalation within the data sets? Was there more
reported violence or more reported destruction
over a certain year period in Rakhine State?
Has it been kind of a steady process in all of
these particular township? That's a good question.
And there has been pattern in the violence because
in late 2023 is when armed groups sort of restarted
their offensive against the military. So you
will see a spike. I can even share my, because
I've been talking about and giving a shout out
to Akhlet so much. And I think I should talk
about how I used Akhlet. So there is also a chart
in my story here, which shows how this is just
the military's air and drone strikes in Rakhine.
I've only done two years, but I looked at I think
from 2022 to 2025 or maybe like April 2026. But
you can see a clear pattern between 2024 and
2025. So late 2023 is when the offensive by armed
groups against the military increased. So when
any offensive increases against the military,
the military also increases their attacks. So
it will do more airstrikes and drone strikes.
It will target more civilian areas. One of the
experts also told us that it is the way of the
military to tell the local population that if
you support these armed groups, you are going
to get attacked. Like armed groups sometimes
can take shelters, you know, villages can provide
you resources and things like that. So the idea
is to destroy civilian areas so that the armed
groups don't get shelter, don't get resources.
So that's why the military attacked civilian
areas. Now, if you see in 2024, in all of these
areas, compared to 2025, there were a lot more.
And the attacks then fell. These are military
attacks. In all of these townships in 2025, they
decreased. In almost all the townships, they
decrease except one, this one where it's remained
the same, barring two townships, which is Chaopiu
and Sittwe, where the attacks increased in 2025.
Everywhere else, they decreased in 2025. Now,
why that has happened is because all of these
other townships were already captured by the
Rakanami. 2025. So the military has now shifted
its focus to Chaopu and Sitwe. So now it's mainly
attacking those two regions and so many attacks
in Chaopu. Again, like if you read about it,
Like I said, Chaopu has a lot of infrastructural
projects. China has invested heavily in Chaopu
and it has an oil and gas pipeline, which provides
an alternate route to China to directly transport
oil from Myanmar to China through the pipeline.
So it's super important for China. China has
also sent some of its soldiers to protect its
infrastructure there. There has been a lot of
attacks in Xiaopu, just because of its strategic
importance. Sittwe as well, not a heavy increase,
but at least according to ACLIN data, there has
been an increase because, again, it's the capital.
A lot of the military is trying to protect the
capital. An army would get a lot of power if
it controls the state capital. Charlie, can you
see this? Can you see I'm sharing? Yeah, so this
is like an actually data. If you have even basic
Python, it's very easy to analyze because the
data is very formatted. You don't have to do
a lot of cleaning with the data. Or you can also,
you know. wipe code and like look at chat GPT
and it might help you with the coding. And this
is the complete data for all those years. I only
did 2024 and 2025, but if you see from 2022 to
2026, but 2026 of course is not complete data.
You can see the pattern. You can see that it
really increased in 2024 and then it dropped
in 2025. And right now in 2026, it's not that
much, because again, you only had three months
of data. But even in 2026, you can then go and
see where the attacks are concentrated. So I
also did like, this is year -wise townships,
what's happening in the townships, like how many
attacks in particular townships. So data from
places like Accolade can give you a good idea,
even though of course new data is going to be
exhaustive. It can give you a good idea about
where fighting is concentrated, what areas, you
know, I should be looking at. Why is there an
uptick in violence in a particular year? And
this is date -wise. So if you want, you can go
even more granular. You can do like month -wise.
Why in a certain month, the military attacked
a certain region more? Was there uptick in daily
attacks? You know, you can do... do a lot with
it. And then you can look at, like I said, it
has coordinates, it has village coordinates.
So once you know that, okay, this certain village,
there's reporting that it was attacked, maybe
there's a lot of, maybe it was attacked, which
villages were attacked multiple times, you know,
through the years, maybe the same villages being
attacked. So you can... then say that, okay,
this village was attacked like five times since
2022. So there's lots that you can do with it.
And I also relied a lot on it just to get the
research started because I didn't know, okay,
where do I start? It's a huge region. How do
I get all of these villages that have been partially
or completely destroyed? So yeah, I would say
for anyone trying to start, research in a new
territory, I think Accolade is a good place to
start because it gives you a good overview of
what is happening. We've got a few questions
in and we're running out of time, so I wanted
to quickly go through them. You mentioned just
then that China has investments in some of the
townships. We had a question from Alt Grade Tab
asking, Is there any way of knowing if Chinese
resources have been used in these attacks? I
know you haven't particularly covered the munitions
found, for example, at the scenes, munition remnants
found at the scene of these attacks, but is there
any indication that there's foreign influence
in regards to this particular conflict? Yeah,
for sure. I mean, munitions is not my expertise.
I personally get super overwhelmed when I'm looking
at munitions. I'm like, I don't know where this
came from. But other organizations like CIR,
they do a really fantastic job on reporting on
Myanmar. They have this initiative called Myanmar
Witness, and the team reports a lot on different
kinds of issues. And I think they did a report
on, I think, Russian planes in Myanmar, if I'm
not wrong. So you could report on that because
the military has air power. How do they get fighter
jets? Who's supplying them fighter jets? There
are Facebook news organizations, like I said,
that exist on Facebook. While you won't have
visuals of the attack itself, you might have
visuals of the aftermath and there would be remnants.
And that could tell you where a specific munitions
came from. But again, I haven't personally looked
at the munitions and this specific topic, but
there are other organizations that are reporting
on it. And there is Chinese influence. And like
I said, in Chaopu, because of the Chinese infrastructure
projects there, China also sent their mercenaries
there to just protect the area. Yeah, so foreign
influence happens in most conflicts and in this
one as well, there is some munitions and air
power that the military has gotten from external
parties. Thank you. If you are interested in
digging into munition types and want to learn
a little bit more, we actually did have a stage
talk a couple of months ago now with Bellingcat
researcher Trevor Ball, who was talking specifically
about identifying munitions in the war with Iran,
however gave really interesting and thorough
talk on ways to identify different munition types
and who might be using them, including a full
list of resources for that kind of work. So again,
we also have the space within the server. bombs,
arms, drones, and other killing machines. And
within there, there's loads of experts on munition
types and you can learn a lot by living in that
particular space. So please do check both of
those resources out, both the stage talk by Trevor
and also the space within the Discord. MatthewsNoise
asked, there's a lot of GPS jamming in the region.
Do you use flight tracking in your reporting
and has the jamming affected that? Have you ever
thought about using fight tracking in this particular
state? So there is a lot of scope to be able
to report on what kind of arms are being used
in Myanmar. And it doesn't specifically have
to be the arms that the military is using. You
could pick a region and then see what is happening
in that region and what kind of arms a specific
ethnic group is using against the military. So
that could also be a way to go about it. about
flight tracking, no, I will not be able to speak
about that because I haven't done it, no. Somebody
has asked, what about funding using drug trafficking?
Is there any reporting on that? I've not come
across anything, but have you seen anything on
that particularly in this region? Yeah, no. I've
read a lot of reporting on the scam centers in
Myanmar that exist in the border regions, specifically
with Thailand, but no, I haven't looked at drug
trafficking, unfortunately. In regards to this
region, and maybe this might be our last question
because of the time, but we'll see. In regards
to this region, what developments in Myanmar
are you watching most closely right now? Now
your investigation is out, where would you have
your eyes going forwards? I would still focus
on Rakhine. Like I said, it's a big country.
It's tough to report on the different states
just because they have such different issues
and things going on. Their economy is made up
of majority Rakhine people. And the fight in
Rakhine is unique to the geography of the state
and to the politics of the state, to the diversity
of the state. A different state would have different
issues. So it's tough. to hop from one state
to the other, because it's a very ethnically
diverse country. So because I have focused on
Rakhine, I think I will continue to focus on
Rakhine, also because the AA has vowed to take
over the state next year. It's going to be challenging,
but would be interesting to look at how the fighting
will progress. And if the military does any counteroffensives,
The story that I did is still a very small overview
of what has happened. There are thousands and
thousands of villages. And while I found only
115, so there is so much scope to still report
on. And it's not just that the villages are bombed
and destroyed, but what happens after that or
what used to exist before that. And there's a
lot that can be reported on. suggestions about
looking at munitions or flight tracking and all
of that, which I haven't looked at myself yet,
but it could be something to look at as well.
So yeah, my focus is still going to be Rakhine.
I did get a follow -up idea from this story.
It would be premature to discuss it, but yeah,
definitely going to focus on Rakhine. Keeping
your cards close to your chest. I appreciate
that. Yeah, in terms of digging into the, also
into the erasure of those villages on the maps
as well is really interesting. And making sure
that what you found already has been archived
and saved somewhere is also incredibly important.
To close, if anybody in this talk or listening
back on the podcast is interested in reaching
out to you, perhaps they know a little bit more
about Rakhine State and want to give you some
information. Perhaps they are interested in looking
into the region themselves and want to learn
a little bit more from you. How can people reach
out and connect with you? You can DM me on Discord.
You can email me. I tend to be more active on
email. If you want to email me, it's puja at
bellingcat .com. I would be very happy to help
anyone with their research in Myanmar. While
I have focused on Rakhine, the methodology can
be used in other areas as well. We can chat about
the different avenues there are to look at the
region. Even if you don't have access to Planet
or something, you can still report on Myanmar
because again, it's an under covered area. So
it's not like Planet has a large amount of high
resolution image. You can do a lot with key satellite
tools which are available for everyone. And yeah,
I would be very, very happy to help anyone who
wants to report on Myanmar. Thank you for that.
And thank you for the talk today. As I said earlier,
we do have a space in the Discord that needs
a little bit of love actually. It used to be
pretty popular and it hasn't been commented in
for a little bit. So if anybody attending this
talk wants to go into the space. Myanmar, Burma
in brackets and to talk about some of the reporting
just mentioned. Please do. Please jump in there
and continue to populate it because we really
want to keep focus on. these under -reported
regions. And thank you again, Pooja, for doing
this talk. We'll be back in two weeks' time with
a stage talk with CNN. Keep your eyes peeled
on announcements and the events tab for more
information about that. But for now, thank you
very much, everybody. Thanks, everyone. Thank
you for listening to the stage talk. If you'd
like to catch a stage tour live where you can
ask the guest questions, join the Bellingcat
Discord server by visiting www .discord .gg slash
Bellingcat. The music you've heard is titled
Dawn by Newer Self and is courtesy of Artlist.