Thousands of Muslims in Burma could be in danger, according to one human rights group. Satellite photos show that a coastal community that was once alive with buildings, houses and activity is now reduced to ashes.

According to Human Rights Watch, satellite photos taken in March 2012 and of the same area in October 2012 show that an area in Kyaukpyu once occupied by Rohingya Muslims is now nearly totally destroyed. The town is one of several places in the Arakan state where battles between Arakan Buddhists and Muslims threaten the nation’s already shaky transition to democracy.

This amounts to ethnic cleansing according to Tun Khin of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation. Speaking to Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom, he said that the cleaning is “proper planned” by the government of the state and perhaps the national government too and is designed to “eliminate” Rohingya people from the Buddhist state.

On October 24, at least 811 buildings and houseboats – and perhaps more – were levelled in Kyankpyu, forcing many Rohingya who has lived in these structures to escape to the north over water toward the somewhat safer state capital Sittwe, the Human Rights Watch said.

Now, the human right’s group is calling on the government to provide security for Rohingya who live in the Arakan state. That is essential, according to Asia director Phil Robertson, because these citizens are “under vicious attack”.

A number of unconfirmed reports indicate that boatloads of Rohingyas have tried to cross the sea border to nearby Bangladesh. It is not known what happened to these refugees since Bangladesh has denied refugee status to these people since 1992.

A large number of fleeing boatloads of Rohingyas that has fled the most recent conflict zone and other hotspots in the area sought access to overcrowded refuge camps in the state capital, according to sources, but apparently not all of them were allowed. The boats carried no food nor water and refugees were sometimes in urgent needs of help and nourishment.

Some of the boats made it to camps, according to sources on the ground in the area.

According to the United Nations, the new democracy in Burma could be “irreparably damaged” by outbreaks of violence, but Rohingyas have nowhere to call home. The Buddhist-led government of Burma considers the 800,000 Rohingyas as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh instead of as one of the 135 officially sanctioned ethical groups in the nation. Therefore, these people are denied citizenship in the country.

Many of those expelled from Kyaukpyu are Kaman, however, an officially sanctioned minority group of Burma, according to advocacy groups. That means the violence has escalated and is no longer just against the Rohingyas, it is against all Muslims.