By AFP

June 25, 2018

Canada on Monday announced sanctions in coordination with the European Union against seven senior Myanmar officials over the Rohingya crisis, accusing them of human rights violations including killings and sexual violence.

"Today, the European Union and Canada have announced sanctions against some of the key military leaders who were involved in atrocities and human rights violations in Rakhine State, including sexual and gender-based violence," Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement.

"Canada and the international community cannot be silent. This is ethnic cleansing. These are crimes against humanity," she said.

The Myanmar officials -- five army generals, a border guard commander and a police commander -- face travel bans and asset freezes for their role in the crisis.

Myanmar's military has forced some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims out of Rakhine and across the border to Bangladesh since August 2017, in a brutal crackdown which UN officials say amounts to ethnic cleansing of the minority.

The Buddhist-majority country has branded the Rohingya as illegal immigrants.

After a period of thawing relations with Myanmar after the country's military junta ceded power in 2011, the Rohingya crisis has seen the EU and Canada take a harder line -- with blacklisting the officials the toughest step taken so far by Brussels and Ottawa.

By AFP/SBS

April 29, 2018

Representatives from the five permanent UN Security Council members are in Bangladesh to see the conditions endured by some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims.

Hundreds of Rohingya staged a demonstration Sunday as UN Security Council envoys visited refugee camps in Bangladesh where about 700,000 people who have fled Myanmar in the past year have sought sanctuary.

Some of the Muslim refugees broke down in tears as they told the ambassadors harrowing stories of murder and rape in Myanmar. The demonstrators waved placards demanding justice for atrocities against the refugees until they were dispersed by police.

Senior diplomats from the 15-member Security Council - including permanent members the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - arrived in Bangladesh on Saturday for a four-day visit to the camps. They will go on to Myanmar where they are to meet civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar has faced intense international pressure over the military clampdown against the Rohingya launched last August that the United Nations has called "ethnic cleansing".

The Security Council has called for the safe return of the Rohingya and an end to the discrimination against them.

However, deputy Russian ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, whose country has supported Myanmar, warned that the council did not have a "magic stick" to resolve what is now one of the world's worst refugee crises.

"We are not looking away from this crisis, we are not closing our eyes," the Russian diplomat told reporters.

Britain's UN ambassador Karen Pierce said the Rohingya "must be allowed to go home in conditions of safety".

"It may take some time but we'd like to hear from the government of Myanmar how they wish to work with the international community," she said.

Safety needed

The UN envoys first visited Konarpara camp, a no man's land between Bangladesh and Myanmar where some 6,000 Rohingya have been trapped on bleak scrubland since the bloodshed began last year.

The camp's Rohingya leader Dil Mohammad said council envoys spoke with some women victims of the violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state, as well as community elders.

"We told them that we're staying here to save our lives. We're very much eager to go back to our land, provided our security is ensured by the UN," Mohammad told AFP.

Later, the diplomats went to the giant Kutupalong camp where hundreds of Rohingya staged the protest that was dispersed by police before the envoys arrived. A second was later held in the camp.

"We want restoration of our citizenship under Rohingya ethnicity. We want security and return of our confiscated land and properties," said Rohingya leader Mohibullah.

The council members were "shocked" by the accounts of rapes, murders and torture endured by the Rohingya in Rakhine, according to Mohibullah.

Myanmar has said the military operation in Rakhine was to root out extremists and has rejected nearly all allegations that its security forces committed atrocities.

The Security Council delegation is to meet with Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday before leaving for Myanmar.

They are to go on a helicopter flight over Rakhine to see the remains of villages torched during the violence.

Kuwait's Ambassador Mansour al-Otaibi said the visit was not about "naming and shaming" Myanmar, but that "the message will be very clear for them: the international community is following the situation and has great interest in resolving it."

On Friday, Human Rights Watch called for the Rohingya crisis to be referred to the International Criminal Court.

"The lack of a UN Security Council resolution has left the Myanmar government convinced that it has literally gotten away with mass murder," HRW executive director Kenneth Roth told reporters in Yangon.

By AFP

April 6, 2018

Five Rohingya stranded at sea for almost three weeks have been rescued by Indonesian fishermen but another five of them died during the harrowing ordeal, officials said Friday.

News of the rescue comes several days after the arrival in Malaysia of another boat carrying dozens of members of the persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar.

The group of two men, aged 28 and 33, a 20-year-old woman, a 15-year-old girl and an eight-year old boy were spotted Monday in a small boat in waters off southern Thailand and Myanmar, 325 kilometres (176 miles) from Aceh province in Muslim-majority Indonesia.

The fishermen took them back to Aceh on Sumatra island and the group arrived early Friday.

"They were immediately brought to a local hospital for treatment as they were weak," Abdul Musafir, head of the East Aceh search and rescue team, told AFP.

"But I'm sure they will be fit again after a couple of days in hospital."

Musafir added that the group said they had been travelling with some two dozen other Rohingya but got separated. He did not provide further details.

East Aceh police said the rescued five were stranded at sea for about 20 days while five others had starved to death and their bodies were thrown overboard.

It has been rare for Rohingya migrants to attempt the sea routes south since Thai authorities clamped down on regional trafficking networks in 2015, sparking a crisis across Southeast Asia as large numbers were abandoned at sea.

But there have been concerns desperate migrants might start taking to the high seas again after mainly Buddhist Myanmar launched a new crackdown last year that forced about 700,000 members of the stateless Muslim minority to flee to Bangladesh.

In 2015 hundreds of Rohingya came ashore in Aceh, where they were welcomed in the staunchly conservative Islamic province.

By AFP

April 1, 2018

A boat carrying dozens of Rohingya refugees trying to reach Malaysia briefly stopped on a Thai island, an official said Sunday, as fears grow about overcrowded camps for the stateless minority fleeing violence in Myanmar.

BANGKOK: A boat carrying dozens of Rohingya refugees trying to reach Malaysia briefly stopped on a Thai island, an official said Sunday (Apr 1), as fears grow about overcrowded camps for the stateless minority fleeing violence in Myanmar.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have sought shelter in southern Bangladesh since Myanmar launched a brutal crackdown on insurgents in August that the US and UN have called ethnic cleansing.

But the refugees have arrived to find cramped settlements and often squalid conditions in Cox's Bazar, where hundreds of thousands who fled previous waves of persecution are already living.

An agreement to repatriate Rohingya from Bangladesh to Myanmar's Rakhine state has yet to see a single refugee returned.

Rohingya migrants attempting the boat routes south have been a rare sighting since Thai authorities clamped down on regional trafficking networks in 2015, leaving thousands of migrants abandoned in open waters or jungle camps.

The Rohingya boat arrived off Thailand's western coast in Krabi province early Sunday due to bad weather.

Images showed the passengers being interviewed on shore and then getting back into the boat before departing.

Krabi governor Kitibodee Pravitra confirmed that the people travelling on the boat were Rohingya but did not know where they had come from.

"The initial report said they were docking near Koh Lanta this morning to avoid the storm," he said, referring to an island popular with tourists. "They want to go to Malaysia."

The Rohingya on board would continue toward their destination, he said.

He said there were about 56 women, men and children on board.

Many of the Rohingya ensnared in the 2015 boat crisis wound up in Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia as Thailand stuck to a policy of not accepting the vessels.

Bangladeshi economic migrants have also taken the boat routes.

There are nearly 70,000 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers living in Malaysia, according to the most recent statistics from the UN refugee agency.

By AFP

March 27, 2018

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday criticized Myanmar's army chief after he declared that the Muslim Rohingya had nothing in common with the country's other ethnic groups.

Guterres said he was "shocked" at reports of General U Min Aung Hlaing's remarks at a military gathering and urged Myanmar's leaders to "take a unified stance against incitement to hatred and to promote cultural harmony."

At the gathering in northern Kachin state on Monday, Hlaing referred to the Rohingya as "Bengalis," a term meant to describe them as foreigners, and said they "do not have the characteristics or culture in common with the ethnicities of Myanmar."

"The tensions were fuelled because the 'Bengalis' demanded citizenship," said the general who was quoted in the Dhaka Tribune.

Some 700,000 Rohingya have been driven into neighbouring Bangladesh since last August by a major army crackdown that the United Nations has likened to ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar authorities say the operation is aimed at rooting out extremists.

Myanmar's de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize laureate, has lost her democratic credentials on the world stage for failing to speak out in favour of the Rohingya.

Guterres said it was "critical that conditions are put in place to ensure that the Rohingya are able to return home voluntarily, in safety and in dignity."

The UN Security Council is hoping to travel to Myanmar to get a first-hand look at the refugee crisis, but has not yet been given the green light for the trip by Myanmar authorities.

Guterres has for months been weighing the appointment of a special envoy for Myanmar that would keep the plight of the Rohingya in the international spotlight.

By AFP

March 7, 2018

DHAKA: A senior Bangladesh cabinet minister has accused Myanmar of obstructing efforts to repatriate roughly 750,000 Rohingya refugees, saying it was unlikely the displaced Muslims would ever return to their homeland.

Finance minister A M A Muhith said the repatriation deal signed between Myanmar and Bangladesh in November would likely fail despite his government's official stance that the refugees must eventually go back.

"I do not believe the Rohingya can be sent back," Muhith, an outspoken minister from the ruling party, told reporters late on Tuesday (Mar 6) in Dhaka after meeting with a British charity.

"You can speculate that very few will return to Burma. The first reason is that Burma will only take a few and secondly is that the refugees will never return if they fear persecution," he added, using another name for Myanmar.

Bangladesh insists the repatriation process will go ahead, last month submitting to Myanmar the names of 8,000 refugees expected to return to Rakhine state where the Muslim minority has been persecuted for generations.

But the plan has courted controversy from the outset.

Rights groups and the UN have warned that conditions for their return are not close to being in place.

Refugees living in camps in southeastern Bangladesh have also resisted the idea, fearing they will not be safe if they return to Rakhine.

Close to one million refugees from the persecuted Muslim minority live in squalid camps in Cox's Bazar, having fled successive waves of violence in Myanmar's westernmost region.

Under the agreement, the first of a proposed 750,000 returnees were scheduled to begin crossing the border in late January.

But the process stalled, with Myanmar and Bangladesh blaming the other for a lack of preparedness for the huge undertaking.

Muhith said Myanmar would "take 15 a day when there is one million", referring to the Rohingya in camps strung along the border.

"They (Myanmar) are absolute evil," he added.

A UN human rights envoy said on Tuesday that Myanmar was continuing its "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya with a "campaign of terror and forced starvation" in Rakhine state.

Rohingya are still streaming across the border from Rakhine state more than six months after a Myanmar army crackdown sparked a massive refugee crisis.

By AFP

February 16, 2018

Bangladesh Friday handed over a list of more than 8,000 Rohingya to Myanmar as it moves to kick-start their repatriation weeks after the process was halted due to lack of preparation.

Dhaka's home minister Asaduzzaman Khan formally gave the list to his Myanmar counterpart Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe after officials of the two nations held a meeting in the Bangladeshi capital.

"We've today handed over a list of 8,032 people from 1,673 families to them. The (Myanmar) delegation received it very cordially and told us they would start processing their repatriation," Khan told reporters.

Bangladesh reached a deal with Myanmar late last year to repatriate nearly 700,000 Rohingya who have fled across the border since August to escape a brutal military crackdown.

That was meant to start last month, but was delayed by a lack of preparation and protests by Rohingya refugees, most of whom say they do not wish to return without guarantees of safety.

Khan said more than one million Rohingya now live in squalid camps in Bangladesh's southeast and Dhaka hoped all of them would be repatriated to Myanmar.

"We discussed how would they repatriate these people. The Myanmar delegation was very cordial about it and said they will take them back gradually," he said.

Bangladesh's refugee commissioner Abul Kalam told AFP Dhaka had already started construction of a transit camp and would start building another next week to facilitate the return of the Rohingya.

This week Bangladesh's junior foreign minister said they had signed a deal to involve the United Nations in the process of returning Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

He said the government was involving the UN refugee agency so that it could not be accused of sending anyone from the stateless Muslim minority back against their will.

He gave few details, but said refugees would be asked to fill out repatriation forms in the presence of UN officials.

But Rohingya refugees are still entering Bangladesh with claims of rights abuses by Buddhist mobs and the military in their native Rakhine state.

Home minister Khan acknowledged people were still crossing the border.

"The (Myanmar) delegation has admitted it and told us they will try their best to stop it as soon as possible," he said

Many Rohingya have lost their homes to arson attacks in their villages, where witnesses and rights groups say entire Rohingya settlements have been burned to the ground.

New arrivals have brought harrowing tales of rape, murder and torture.

The Rohingya also want guarantees of citizenship before returning to Myanmar, which views them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though many have been there for generations.

Khan said there was no specific timeframe to start the repatriation but he hoped it would start soon.

"No specific date came for repatriation but they showed sincerity and are taking preparations to take their nationals back," he said

He urged Myanmar to ensure the refugees' return was "sustainable", adding the Rohingya "may face difficulties in resettling back into their land".

The two sides also discussed the fate of some 6,000 Rohingya refugees who have been stranded in no man's land on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border since September.

"They said they have started processing repatriation of those refugees living on the (border's) zero line," Khan said, adding Myanmar has "requested" a joint meeting on their repatriation on February 20.

Last week a Myanmar government minister told refugees stranded on the border that they should take up a government offer to return, warning they will face "consequences" if they stay where they are.

A video circulated on social media apparently shows Myanmar's Deputy Minister for Home Affairs Aung Soe addressing a group of refugees through a barbed wire fence last Friday.

By AFP

February 14, 2018

Myanmar has failed to put in place conditions for the safe return of 688,000 Rohingya refugees who fled an army crackdown six months ago, the UN refugee chief said Monday. 

The refugees are sheltering in makeshift camps in Bangladesh despite an agreement reached between Myanmar and Bangladesh allowing for their return to their homes in Rakhine state.

"Let me be clear: conditions are not yet conducive to the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told a Security Council meeting, speaking by videoconference from Geneva.

"The causes of their flight have not been addressed, and we have yet to see substantive progress on addressing the exclusion and denial of rights that has deepened over the last decades, rooted in their lack of citizenship."

Myanmar regards the Rohingya as immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship, even though they have been there for generations.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley urged the council to ensure Myanmar's military is held accountable for its campaign against the Rohingya, following accounts of killings, burning of villages, rape and mass graves.

"This council must hold the military accountable for their actions and pressure Aung San Suu Kyi to acknowledge these horrific acts are taking place in her country. No more excuses," Haley said.

The United Nations has accused Myanmar of carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign by forcing the Muslim Rohingyas into exile.

China, a supporter of Myanmar's former ruling junta, called for patience and noted that "stability and order" had been restored to Rakhine state.

The Rohingya crisis "cannot be solved overnight," said Chinese Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu.

Measures should be adopted by Myanmar "to address the root cause of poverty through development" in Rakhine, he said, sidestepping appeals for citizenship rights for the Rohingya.

'Too scared to return'

The meeting came nearly three months after the council adopted a statement demanding that Myanmar rein in its security forces and allow the Rohingya to voluntarily return.

The UN refugee chief said that while the exodus had significantly decreased, the flow "still continues," with some 1,500 refugees arriving in Bangladesh this month.

Haley said the refugees should not return to Myanmar until they feel confident that "they will not fall victim to the same horrors that drove them from their homes in the first place."

"Right now, these refugees don't have this confidence," she said. "Many are too scared to return to their country."

Haley's concerns were echoed by France, Britain and Sweden, among other countries, but Myanmar's ambassador said his government was ready to move ahead with plans to take back refugees.

Myanmar has made "great strides" in restoring stability and has given Bangladesh a list of "508 Hindus and 750 Muslims" to be among the first returnees, said Ambassador Hau Do Suan.

- Moonsoon puts 100,000 refugees at risk -

The UN refugee chief also raised alarm over the monsoon rainy season starting next month, warning that 100,000 refugees were living in flood-prone areas and must be urgently relocated.

International support to Bangladesh's government must be stepped up "to avert a catastrophe," he warned.

The council is demanding that aid workers be allowed to reach those displaced inside Rakhine state and wants UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to quickly appoint a special envoy to Myanmar.

By AFP

February 12, 2018

COX'S BAZAR (BANGLADESH) -- Bangladesh has signed a deal to involve the United Nations in the controversial process of returning Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, a minister said Monday.

Junior foreign minister Shahriar Alam said the government was involving the UN refugee agency so that it could not be accused of sending anyone from the stateless Muslim minority back against their will.

He gave few details, but said refugees would be asked to fill out repatriation forms in the presence of UN officials.

Bangladesh reached a deal with Myanmar late last year to repatriate the nearly 700,000 Rohingya who have fled across the border since August to escape a brutal military crackdown.

That was meant to start last month, but was delayed by a lack of preparations and protests by Rohingya refugees, most of whom say they do not wish to return without guarantees of safety.

"We have repeatedly said this repatriation process is very complex," Alam told reporters.

"We want to fill up the (repatriation) forms in their (UN) presence so that no one can say they been forced by someone or sent back against their will," he told reporters at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh's southeastern border district of Cox's Bazar.

There was no immediate comment from the UN, which has said previously that any repatriation must be voluntary.

Alam urged patience and said Bangladesh did not want to send back the refugees only to have them return, as has happened after past rounds of repatriation.

Bangladesh "wants to make sure the situation in Myanmar is safe and secure", he said.

Refugees are still entering Bangladesh with claims of rights abuses by Buddhist mobs and the military.

Many have lost their homes to arson attacks in their native Rakhine state, where witnesses and rights groups say entire Rohingya settlements have been burned to the ground.

New arrivals have brought harrowing tales of rape, murder and torture.

The Rohingya also want guarantees of citizenship before returning to Myanmar, which views them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though many have been there for generations.

By AFP

February 12, 2018

YANGON -- Aerial photos of Rakhine state have emerged that appear to show several bulldozed Rohingya settlements, renewing accusations Myanmar is wiping out the homes and history of the Muslim minority.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar's Rakhine state to Bangladesh since insurgent attacks on police posts triggered a brutal military crackdown.

The UN has led global condemnation of the army action, describing it as ethnic cleansing.

Rights activists also say the systematic destruction of hundreds of villages, mosques and property is effectively rubbing out the Rohingya's ties to their ancestral lands.

The Muslim minority are not recognised as an ethnic group in Myanmar and have faced decades of persecution.

Many fear the recent crackdown is a push to rid the country of the Rohingya for good.

Photos posted on social media after a diplomatic tour of the conflict zone in northern Rakhine state last week appear to back that up.

The haunting pictures, posted on the Twitter account of the European Union Ambassador to Myanmar Kristian Schmidt, show a scarred territory with large patches of levelled land.

Villages incinerated during the army crackdown now appear to have been completely bulldozed, devoid of all structures and even trees.

"The Rohingyas are shocked to see their villages razed," said Chris Lewa, head of the NGO the Arakan Project, which has worked for years with Rohingya in Rakhine state. 

They fear the upcoming rainy season will further wash away any signs of their past lives, she added.

"The Rohingya have the feeling that they (the military) are doing away with the last traces of their presence in the region," she said.

Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a repatriation agreement last year that was supposed to commence in January.

But many Rohingya refuse to return without the guarantee of basic rights and safety.

Authorities in Myanmar also insist they will heavily vet all returnees and only take back those "verified" as residents -- a complex and controversial process critics say is likely to exclude large numbers of people.

Myanmar's Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye, the lead official in the resettlement process, said the bulldozing was part of a plan to "build back" villages to a higher standard than before.

"We are trying to have the new village plan," he said. "When they come back they can live in their place of origin or nearest to their place of origin."

He said it is taking time because of a labour shortage sparked by the Rohingya exodus and that the government plans to pay returnees to help rebuild their own homes. 

Accusations of a systematic campaign to rid Rakhine of Rohingya history are not new.

Last year the United Nations human rights office alleged efforts were underway to "effectively erase signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory".

Access to Rakhine remains tightly controlled, despite a snowballing number of allegations of massacres of Rohingya villagers in Rakhine.

The arrest of two Reuters journalists investigating the extra-judicial killing of ten Rohingya "terrorist" suspects in custody has upped pressure on civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi to condemn the army.

Her administration is in a delicate power-sharing arrangement with the army, which ruled with an iron fist for five decades.

By AFP

January 19, 2018

DHAKA: Hundreds of Rohingya refugees staged protests in Bangladesh Friday (Jan 19) against plans to send them back to Myanmar, where a military crackdown last year sparked a mass exodus.

The refugees chanted slogans and held banners demanding citizenship and guarantees of security before they return to their home state of Rakhine in Myanmar.

The protest came ahead of a visit by UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee to the camps in southeastern Bangladesh where around a million of the Muslim minority are now living.

Bangladesh has reached an agreement with Myanmar to send back the around 750,000 refugees who have arrived since October 2016 over the next two years, a process set to begin as early as next week.

But many Rohingya living in the crowded, unsanitary camps have said they do not want to return to Rakhine after fleeing atrocities including murder, rape and arson attacks on their homes.

Rights groups and the UN say any repatriations must be voluntary.

They have also expressed concerns about conditions in Myanmar, where many Rohingya settlements have been burned to the ground by soldiers and Buddhist mobs.

The government has said it is building temporary camps to accommodate the returnees, a prospect feared by Rohingya, said Mohibullah, a refugee and former teacher.

"We want safe zones in Arakan (Rakhine) before repatriation," he told AFP by phone from Cox's Bazar, where the camps are located.

"We want a UN peacekeeping force in Arakan. We want fundamental rights and citizenship. We do not want repatriation without life guarantees," Mohibullah said.

Police said they were unaware of the protests.

A Bangladesh official said around 6,500 Rohingya currently living in no man's land between the two countries would be among the first to be repatriated.

The repatriation deal does not cover the estimated 200,000 Rohingya refugees who were living in Bangladesh prior to October 2016, driven out by previous rounds of communal violence and military operations.

By AFP

January 18, 2018

UNITED NATIONS, United States -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday (Jan 16) expressed concerns after Myanmar and Bangladesh reached a deal on the return of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingyas that sidelined the UN refugee agency.

"We believe it would be very important to have UNHCR fully involved in the operation to guarantee that the operation abides by international standards," Guterres told a press conference at the UN headquarters.

The agreement, finalised in Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw this week, sets a two-year deadline for the repatriation of the Rohingya.

Guterres, who served as UN high commissioner for refugees for 10 years, said the UN refugee agency was consulted about the agreement but is not a party to the deal as is usually the case for such repatriation plans.

The deal applies to approximately 750,000 Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh following two army crackdowns in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state in October 2016 and August last year.

Guterres said it was essential that the returns be voluntary and that the Rohingya are allowed to return to their original homes - not to camps.

"The worst would be to move these people from camps in Bangladesh to camps in Myanmar," said Guterres who spoke to journalists after presenting his priorities for 2018 to the General Assembly.

UN member-states in December adopted a resolution condemning the violence in Rakhine state and requesting that Guterres appoint a special envoy for Myanmar.

The UN chief said he expects to make that appointment soon.

More than 650,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled the mainly Buddhist country since the military operation was launched in Rakhine state in late August.

Myanmar authorities insist the campaign is aimed at rooting out Rohingya militants who attacked police posts on August 25 but the United Nations has said the violence amounts to ethnic cleansing.

By AFP

January 15, 2018

YANGON, Myanmar — Talks were held Monday to “settle issues” over the repatriation of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, Bangladeshi officials told AFP, as doubts linger over how many of the 655,000 Muslim minority who fled violence are likely to return.

Under diplomatic pressure, Myanmar has vowed to repatriate refugees driven into Bangladesh by an army crackdown last year, if they can verify they belong in western Rakhine state.

But aid agencies question how many Rohingya, a Muslim minority reviled inside Myanmar, will be able to prove their residence given the speed of their flight and complexity of their status in Myanmar.

Most Rohingya refugees approached by AFP in the Bangladeshi camps also say they will not return to a state where their villages have been torched and where they allege atrocities by the army and ethnic Rakhine locals.

Officials from the two countries met in Naypyidaw on Monday to “settle issues” related to repatriation, two Bangladeshi officials familiar with the talks told AFP, requesting anonymity and without giving specific details.

The two governments signed an agreement in November paving the way for repatriations from January 23.

The deal applies to Rohingya who fled Myanmar in two major outbreaks of violence since October 2016.

It does not cover an estimated 200,000 Rohingya refugees who were living in Bangladesh prior to that date.

Last month Bangladeshi officials said they had sent a list of 100,000 names to Myanmar for the first round of repatriation.

Myanmar is yet to publicly endorse the list or even confirm it has received the names.

But the country is on track for the January 23 deadline, the state-backed Global New Light of Myanmar reported Monday, adding building work is ongoing at the 124-acre Hla Po Khaung “temporary camp” in Rakhine’s Maungdaw district.

Eventually the site “will accommodate about 30,000 people in its 625 buildings” before they can be resettled permanently.

The report did not mention the Rohingya — who are denigrated by many in Myanmar as “Bengali” immigrants and mostly denied citizenship.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya have languished in squalid IDP camps inside Rakhine after earlier unrest in 2012, raising fears that any returnees from Bangladesh will be thrust into a similar limbo.

Diplomats have also cast doubt on Myanmar’s willingness to allow substantial numbers of Rohingya back after an intense army campaign forced over half their number out.

In an unprecedented statement last week, Myanmar’s army admitted security forces took part in the extra-judicial killings of 10 Rohingya in their custody at Inn Din village.

Amnesty International called the admission “the tip of the iceberg” of alleged massacres, rapes and arson attacks on Rohingya villages carried out in the weeks after August 25.

Myanmar’s army defends its ‘clearance operations’ as a legitimate response to deadly raids by Rohingya militants.

Bangladeshi authorities vaccinated Rohingya refugees for cholera and measles but were surprised by the diphtheria outbreak. (Photo: AFP/Munir Uz Zaman)

By AFP
January 13, 2018

UKHIA, Bangladesh -- In a makeshift bamboo clinic, small children struggle to draw breath through surgical masks, victims of a forgotten but deadly disease that has torn through the teeming Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Diphtheria had been all but eradicated in Bangladesh until last year, when more than 650,000 Rohingya poured across the border fleeing a bloody military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.

Packed into an area meant for a much smaller number of refugees and with little sanitation or healthcare, the new arrivals provided fertile ground for the highly contagious respiratory disease to take hold.

It quickly spread through the camps, with the World Health Organization reporting more than 3,600 cases.

The outbreak has already claimed the lives of at least 30 refugees, mostly children, while a handful of Bangladeshis living near the camps have also contracted the disease.

Carla Pla, head nurse at the specialist diphtheria unit run by medical charity MSF (Doctors Without Borders), said children were arriving with "severe" symptoms.

"This is a very challenging situation, because everyday there are coming more children, and the challenge to get the vaccine is also something that is very difficult," she told AFP at the unit.

Nearly 600 refugees have been referred there since it opened in December, putting enormous pressure on doctors also struggle to treat rampant malnutrition, water-borne disease and other diseases in the camps.

When AFP visited this week most of the patients were small children, some of them clearly struggling to breathe.

CAUGHT OFF GUARD

Bangladesh authorities were prepared for other diseases and moved quickly to inoculate the new arrivals against cholera and measles to prevent a health disaster.

But the emergence of diphtheria, which causes difficulty breathing and can lead to heart failure, paralysis and death if left untreated, caught aid workers off guard.

"We were taken aback when tests confirmed diphtheria in the camps. It was a long-lost disease in our country," said Abdus Salam, the chief medical officer for Cox's Bazar district, where the camps are located.

"Immediately, we acquired vaccines from abroad for an emergency response."

In December, they launched a huge vaccination push. Nearly 320,000 children aged under 15 have now been inoculated and another 160,000 children are expected to receive the vaccine this month.

High rates of vaccination mean diphtheria has become increasingly rare in much of the world, although Yemen is currently suffering an outbreak.

But the Rohingya come from impoverished Rakhine state, where state-imposed restrictions have ensured abysmal living standards for the persecuted Muslim community, and many children are not vaccinated.

Pla said it was challenging for staff treating a disease that "only existed in the textbooks for all these years", with many doctors seeing live cases for the first time in their careers.

SHORTAGE OF DOCTORS

Mohammad Hossain assumed his son, now being treated in the MSF clinic, had the same minor throat infection affecting other Rohingya children in the refugee camp.

"I thought it was tonsilitis. But the doctors said it was much more serious," Hossain told AFP, wearing a protective mask as he tended to the 11-year-old.

The appearance of diphtheria, long forgotten in many parts of the world, has compounded the misery for close to one million displaced Rohingya Muslims living in extreme hardship near the border with Myanmar.

Seven specialist diphtheria field clinics have been set up to treat the rising number of patients since the outbreak, said WHO's Southeast Asia emergency director Roderico Ofrin.

Together the wards house 400 beds for patients, but a shortage of doctors has required medics to be flown in from Britain and elsewhere to help battle the outbreak.

Treatment involves administering an antitoxin and antibiotics.

At the MSF ward, where Hossain's son Mohammad Rashed is making a slow recovery, medics wearing single-use scrubs work in tented-off wards treating patients.

Everyone coming into contact with the tents, set away in an isolated clearing, must wear masks and wash their hands in chlorinated water.

Preventing infected patients from coming into contact with the wider, largely unvaccinated population of Rohingya remains a priority, doctors said.

Rohingya community leaders meanwhile are trying to spread awareness about this resurgent disease to offset a full-blown epidemic.

By AFP

January 12, 2018

A Rohingya woman and three children perished when a fire gutted their tent shelter in a UN camp in Bangladesh, authorities said Friday.

Police and a Red Crescent official said a candle sparked the fire late Thursday at a UN-run transit camp for refugees in Ghumdum border village.

"Seven people were severely burnt. They were shifted to a Red Crescent field hospital where two people died last night and another two died this morning (Friday)," Ikram Elahi Chowdhury, a regional head of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, told AFP.

The victims had only arrived from Myanmar in the past week and were waiting at the transit centre to be shifted to a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar district.

Joseph Tripura, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, said an investigation had been started.

"We are working closely with the Bangladeshi authorities to ascertain how the fire started and how tragedies like this can be prevented in the future," he said in a statement.

More than 650,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh since August 25 after Myanmar's security forces launched what the UN and US officials have called ethnic cleansing in the country's Rakhine state.

Many refugees start at transit centres set up along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border before they are brought to the main refugee camps in Cox's Bazar.

Aid workers have warned that flimsy tents and bamboo and tarpaulin shelters set up to house the refugees are potential fire traps.

By Sam Jahan

AFP

January 11, 2018

BALUKHALI (BANGLADESH) -- Rohingya Muslims who fled a village where Myanmar has admitted its forces helped massacre 10 people said Thursday the victims were all civilians, not fighters as asserted by the army.

The Myanmar army chief's office confirmed Wednesday that security forces took part in killing "Bengali terrorists" on September 2 in the village of Inn Din in Rakhine state, using a pejorative term for Rohingya.

It was the first time Myanmar had admitted abuses during an army-led crackdown on Rohingya militants from late August that sparked a mass exodus of the Muslim minority.

But displaced Rohingya inside Bangladesh have angrily denied the army's account, with survivors who fled Inn Din insisting those killed were not militants but civilians murdered in cold blood.

Inn Din villager Wal Marjan, 30, said they were attacked by Buddhist mobs flanked by soldiers, who later "selected 10 to 15 men to attend a meeting".

They were never seen again, said Marjan, who was later told by another man that her husband and the others were slaughtered.

"He said his body was thrown into a mass grave with the other men," Marjan told AFP at a refugee camp in southeast Bangladesh, adding her husband had no connections with Rohingya rebels.

In its account of the massacre the army chief's office said security forces captured 10 Rohingya militants before killing them as violence engulfed the village and its surrounding area.

The post on Facebook also gave the first confirmation of a mass Rohingya grave inside Rakhine state.

But Inn Din villager Hossain Ahammad said the slain men were "fishermen, farmers, lumberjacks and clerics".

"They were not part of any movement. They are simply victims of the Burmese army's wrath," he told AFP.

Refugees who have fled in their hundreds of thousands to Bangladesh have given consistent accounts of massacres, rape and torture by Myanmar security forces flanked by ethnic Rakhine mobs.

Those allegations, which have been cross-checked by media and rights groups, have seen Myanmar accused of ethnic cleansing by the US and UN and prompted questions over whether the crackdown may have amounted to genocide.

Until Wednesday, Myanmar army has vigorously denied any abuses, instead locking down access to Rakhine state and accusing critics -- including the UN -- of pro-Rohingya bias and spreading "fake news".

The army chief's office said "action" would be taken against villagers and security members involved in the violence at Inn Din.

Last month Doctors Without Borders said at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the first month of the army crackdown on rebels in Rakhine -- the highest estimated death toll yet of violence that erupted on August 25.

By AFP

January 8, 2018

A Bangladesh court on Monday upheld a government ruling banning marriage between its citizens and refugees from Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority, who have fled ethnic violence in the neighbouring country.

The High Court in Dhaka dismissed a legal challenge from a father whose son married a Rohingya teenager in a Muslim ceremony in September despite laws forbidding such unions.

Marriages with Rohingya were banned in 2014 to try to prevent hundreds of thousands of refugees living in Bangladesh from seeking a back door to citizenship.

Babul Hossain, whose 26-year-old son ran away with his new wife after they married, questioned the legality of the ruling that threatens a seven-year jail term for any Bangladeshi who weds a Rohingya refugee.

But the court rejected his plea and ordered he pay 100,000 taka ($1,200) in legal costs.

"The court rejected the petition and has upheld the administrative order, which bans marriage between Bangladeshi citizens and Rohingya people," deputy attorney general Motaher Hossain Saju told AFP.

Hossain's request that the court protect his son from arrest was also rejected, Saju added.

About 655,000 Rohingya have escaped to Bangladesh since August after the Myanmar army began a campaign of rape and murder in Rakhine state.

They joined the more than 200,000 refugees already living in Bangladesh who had fled previous violence in Rakhine.

Aid groups have reported cases of Bangladeshis offering young women marriage as a way of escaping the overcrowded refugee camps along Bangladesh's southeastern border.

Hossain could not be contacted after the ruling.

But in a previous statement, he defended his son's marriage to the 18-year-old Rohingya woman and denied it was driven by a quest for citizenship.

"If Bangladeshis can marry Christians and people of other religions, what´s wrong in my son´s marriage to a Rohingya?" Hossain told AFP.

"He married a Muslim who took shelter in Bangladesh."

By AFP

January 7, 2018

A small community of Hindus who lived alongside the Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine state and were caught up in the turmoil say they do want to return

Hindu farmer Surodhon Pal has packed his bags, eager to return to Myanmar after fleeing for Bangladesh during a wave of violence last year, but he is in a tiny minority – most of the refugees are terrified of going home.

Bangladesh wants the more than 655,000 refugees who have flooded into the country since late August to start returning to Myanmar by the end of this month under a controversial agreement between the two nations.

The vast majority are Rohingya Muslims who have faced decades of persecution in Myanmar, which sees them as illegal immigrants, even though many have lived there for generations.

They say they would rather stay in the squalid camps in Bangladesh than return to the scene of violence the US and the United Nations have said amounts to ethnic cleansing.

But a small community of Hindus who lived alongside the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and were caught up in the turmoil say they do want to return.

“We want security and we want food. If the authorities can give us those assurances we’ll happily go back,” Pal, 55, told AFP.

“The Bangladeshi government and the UN looked after us well, but now we have prepared our bags and are ready to return to our country.”

Last month Dhaka sent a list of 100,000 refugees to Myanmar authorities for repatriation after the two governments signed an agreement in November for the process to begin on January 23.

But rights groups and the United Nations say no one should be repatriated against their will and so far only around 500 Hindu refugees have expressed willingness to go.

Massacre by masked men

Modhuram Pal, a 35-year-old community leader, said some 50 Hindus had already returned to Rakhine where they were welcomed by Myanmar security forces.

Hindus who fled the area have told AFP that masked men stormed into their community and hacked victims to death with machetes before dumping them into freshly-dug pits.

Myanmar’s military alleges the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA) carried out the massacre on August 25, the same day the rebel group staged deadly raids on police posts that sparked a military backlash. At least 45 bodies have been found in mass graves.

The ARSA has denied the allegations, saying it does not target civilians.

But Pal and his fellow Hindu refugees say they will only go back if they are rehoused away from their former villages in Rakhine.

Monubala, a Hindu woman who like many of the refugees goes by one name, told AFP masked men dressed in black had attacked her village near Kha Maung Seik, where the massacre occurred.

“I left my home, including my chickens, ducks, goats and all property, and came to Bangladesh to save my life,” she said.

Doctors without Borders estimates that thousands were killed in the violence that hit Rakhine in late August.

Consistent accounts by Rohingya refugees of security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs driving them out of their homes with bullets, rape and arson have shocked the globe.

Although the influx has slowed, hundreds of Rohingya are still crossing into Bangladesh, now home to around a million refugees.

Rights groups say the crackdown was the culmination of years of persecution and discrimination against the Muslim group in mainly Buddhist Myanmar, where they are effectively stateless and denigrated as outsiders.

‘Communal divide and rule’

It remains unclear why the Hindus were targeted, but they appear to have been caught in the middle of a conflict between the military and Rohingya militants. Some reports say each side viewed the Hindus as collaborators with the other.

Myanmar state media said last month that the Hindus would be first to be accepted back – a stance that expert Shahab Enam Khan called a “classic case of communal divide and rule.”

“The issue of religion as a tool for repression is visibly clear now, the global community should be aware,” Khan, professor of International Relations at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, told AFP.

Tensions between the two communities have persisted in Bangladesh, where the Hindus live away from the main refugee camps.

Pal, the community leader, said two Hindu refugees in Bangladesh had been killed by Rohingya in a dispute over the sale of cattle they had brought over the border.

Local police chief Abul Khaer confirmed that a complaint had been lodged, and the body of one of the alleged victims found.

“We were tortured because of the war between Myanmar government and the [Rohingya] rebels,” Shshu Pal Shil, 25, told AFP in his makeshift shelter.

“That’s why we were forced to come to Bangladesh. If the Myanmar government wants to take us back now, we’ll be happy to go back.”