PUBLISHED : Friday, 19 January, 2018
Rohingya leaders in a Bangladesh refugee camp have drawn up a list of demands they want Myanmar to meet before authorities begin sending back hundreds of thousands in a repatriation process expected to begin next week and last for two years.
Half a dozen Rohingya elders, saying they represented 40 villages from Rakhine State, showed the list of demands to a reporter at Kutupalong refugee camp, where most of the 655,500 Rohingya refugees are staying.
The petition, handwritten in Burmese, says none of the Muslim Rohingya would return to mainly Buddhist Myanmar unless the demands were met.
It wants the military held accountable for alleged killings, looting and rape, and the release from jail of “innocent Rohingya” picked up in counter-insurgency operations.
It also wants Myanmar to stop listing people with their photographs as “terrorists” in state media and on government Facebook pages.
Why the world won’t call the Rohingya crisis ‘genocide’
Myanmar state newspapers this week issued a supplement listing the names and photos of alleged members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), whose attacks on security posts on August 25 triggered a sweeping counter-insurgency operation.
The military says it only conducted legitimate operations and denies there have been cases of sexual assault.
But the military said last week soldiers had killed 10 captured Muslim “terrorists” during insurgent attacks at the beginning of September, after Buddhist villagers had forced the captured men into a grave the villagers had dug.
Myanmar to repatriate displaced Rohingya ‘within two years’
It was a rare acknowledgement of wrongdoing by the Myanmar military during its operations in Rakhine state.
ARSA said in a statement last week the 10 Rohingya in the mass grave were “innocent civilians” and not members of its group.
They said the 40 village leaders they discussed the petition with represent the interests of all Rohingya at the camp.
Bangladesh and Myanmar this week agreed to complete the return of the refugees over the next two years, with the process starting on Tuesday.
But even as preparations get underway for the repatriation, Rohingya Muslims continue to pour into Bangladesh.
Bangladesh says there are more than 1 million Rohingya in its camps
More than 100 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar since Wednesday and scores more were waiting to cross the Naf river that forms the border, newly arrived refugees in Bangladesh said.
They said they fled out of hunger, after hiding in their homes for days, unable to go to work in the fields and forests that provided their livelihood.
In Myanmar village, men were slaughtered in grave they dug
Myanmar Police Colonel Myo Thu Soe, spokesman for the military-controlled Home Affairs Ministry, told Reuters on Thursday “there’s no clearance operation going on in the villages”.
But, he added, “security forces are still trying to take control of the area” in northern Rakhine. He declined to elaborate.
Aid agencies and rights groups have warned that the repatriation exercise cannot succeed unless the fears and concerns of the refugees in Bangladesh are addressed.