By UN News Centre

April 14, 2018

The United Nations refugee agency and the Government of Bangladesh on Friday signed a cooperation agreement on the safe, dignified return of Rohingya refugees to their homes in Myanmar, “once conditions there are conducive.”

Noting that such conditions are not present at the moment, the UN refugee agency urged Myanmar authorities to create them as well as to take concrete measures to address the root causes of displacement.

“The responsibility for creating such conditions remains with the Myanmar authorities, and these must go beyond the preparation of physical infrastructure to facilitate logistical arrangements,” the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stressed.

The agency also noted that in the absence of a UNHCR-Myanmar-Bangladesh agreement, it has continued to engage with both Governments in negotiations on two separate memoranda of understanding (MOUs), meant to ensure that any future returns are conducted in line with the international standards.

More than 670,000 members of the Muslim minority Rohingya community fled violence in Myanmar since August 2017, joining an estimated 200,000 Rohingya who have sought shelter in Bangladesh, arriving in waves over the past decades.

According to UNHCR, the refugees have said that before considering return to Myanmar, they would need to see concrete progress in relation to their legal status and citizenship, security, and their ability to enjoy basic rights at home in Rakhine state.

UNHCR also urged the Myanmar Government to immediately provide full and unhindered access to refugees’ places of origin in Rakhine, which would enable it to assess the situation and provide information to refugees about conditions in the places of origin, as well as to monitor any possible future return and reintegration of refugees.

“Another practical measure would be to ease restrictions on movement for the internally displaced persons encamped in the central townships of Rakhine state, which would also help to build confidence among refugees in Bangladesh,” it added.

“Such concrete measures would help demonstrate to refugees that the Government of Myanmar is committed to a sustainable solution.”

By Edith M. Lederer 

Associated Press

April 14, 2018

UNITED NATIONS — A new U.N. report puts Myanmar’s armed forces on a U.N. blacklist of government and rebel groups “credibly suspected” of carrying out rapes and other acts of sexual violence in conflict for the first time.

An advance copy of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ report to the Security Council, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, says international medical staff and others in Bangladesh have documented that many of the almost 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled from Myanmar “bear the physical and psychological scars of brutal sexual assault.”

The U.N. chief said the assaults were allegedly perpetrated by the Myanmar Armed Forces, known as the Tatmadaw, “at times acting in concert with local militias, in the course of military ‘clearance’ operations in October 2016 and August 2017.”

“The widespread threat and use of sexual violence was integral to this strategy, serving to humiliate, terrorize and collectively punish the Rohingya community, as a calculated tool to force them to flee their homelands and prevent their return,” Guterres said.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar doesn’t recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic group, insisting they are Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living illegally in the country. It has denied them citizenship, leaving them stateless.

The recent spasm of violence began when Rohingya insurgents launched a series of attacks last Aug. 25 on about 30 security outposts and other targets. Myanmar security forces then began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages that the U.N. and human rights groups have called a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

“Violence was visited upon women, including pregnant women, who are seen as custodians and propagators of ethnic identity, as well as on young children, who represent the future of the group,” Guterres said. “This can be linked to an inflammatory narrative alleging that high fertility rates among the Rohingya represent an existential threat to the majority population.”

The report, which will be a focus of a U.N. Security Council meeting Monday on preventing sexual violence in conflict, puts 51 government, rebel and extremist groups on the list.

They include 17 from Congo including the armed forces and national police, seven from Syria including the armed forces and intelligence services, six each from Central African Republic and South Sudan, five from Mali, four from Somalia, three from Sudan, one each from Iraq and Myanmar, and Boko Haram which operates in several countries.

“As a general trend,” Guterres said, “the rise or resurgence of conflict and violent extremism, with its ensuing proliferation of arms, mass displacement, and collapsed rule of law, triggers patterns of sexual violence.”

This was evident in many places in 2017 as insecurity spread to new regions in Central African Republic, violence surged in eastern and central Congo, conflict engulfed South Sudan, violence wracked Syria and Yemen, and “’ethnic cleansing’ in the guise of clearance operations unfolded in Northern Rakhine State, Myanmar,” he said.

Guterres said most victims are “politically and economically marginalized women and girls” concentrated in remote, rural areas with the least access to services that can help them, and in refugee camps and areas for the displaced.

The year 2017 “also saw sexual violence continue to be employed as a tactic of war, terrorism, torture and repression,” he said, citing conflicts in CAR, Congo, Iraq, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan as examples of “this alarming trend.”

Guterres said sexual violence continues to serve as a “push factor” for forced displacement in places such as Colombia, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Syria. And he said it remained “a heightened risk in transit, refugee and displacement settings.”

The secretary-general said the effects of sexual violence can impact generations as a result of trauma, stigma, poverty, poor health and unwanted pregnancy.

In South Sudan, for instance, Guterres said sexual violence is so prevalent that a Commission of Inquiry described women and girls as “collectively traumatized.” He said children born of this violence have been labeled “bad blood” or “children of the enemy” and warned that this vulnerability “may leave them susceptible to recruitment, radicalization and trafficking.”

Guterres said many women, including Rohingya refugees, are reluctant to return to locations they fled where forces including alleged perpetrators remain in control.

“Colombia is the only country in which children conceived through wartime rape are legally recognized as victims, though it has been difficult for them to access redress without being stigmatized,” he said.

The secretary-general lamented that “most incidents of mass rape continue to be met with mass impunity.”

For example, Guterres said, not a single member of the Islamic State extremist group or Boko Haram “has been prosecuted for sexual violence offenses to date.”

By Reuters

April 13, 2018

YANGON -- The government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi expressed “serious concern” on Friday over a move by the International Criminal Court prosecutor seeking jurisdiction over alleged deportations of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh. 

Since August, nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar, the United Nations and aid agencies have said. 

The refugees have reported killings, rape and arson on a large scale. The United States and the United Nations have described the situation as ethnic cleansing. 

Myanmar has denied nearly all allegations, saying it waged a legitimate counter-insurgency operation. The government has said the army crackdown was provoked by the attacks of Rohingya militants on more than two dozen police posts and an army base last August. 

In a filing made public on Monday, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda asked the court to rule whether it has jurisdiction over the alleged deportations. 

An affirmative decision could pave the way for her to investigate the alleged deportations as a possible crime against humanity. One reason for the question over jurisdiction is that, while Bangladesh is a member of the court, Myanmar is not. 

“The Government of Myanmar expresses serious concern on the news regarding the application by the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor to claim jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of the Muslims from Rakhine to Bangladesh,” the administration said in a statement. 

In her application, Bensouda argued that, given the cross-border nature of the crime of deportation, a ruling in favour of ICC jurisdiction would be in line with established legal principles. 

“Nowhere in the ICC charter does it say the court has jurisdiction over states which have not accepted that jurisdiction. Furthermore, the 1969 UN Vienna Convention on International Treaties states that no treaty can be imposed on a country that has not ratified it,” the Myanmar government said in its statement. 

Bensouda was trying “to override the principle of national sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, in contrary to the principle enshrined in the UN charter and recalled in the ICC charter’s preamble,” it said. 

The ICC prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request on Friday seeking comment on the Myanmar government’s statement. 

The government also said in its statement it was working on repatriation of the Rohingya with Bangladesh and its minister had just visited refugee camps in Bangladesh. 

Bensouda’s request is the first of its kind filed at the court. She asked the ICC to call a hearing to hear her arguments, as well as those of other interested parties. 

The magistrate assigned to consider the request, Congolese judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua, will determine how to proceed. 

Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

By Serajul Quadir, Stephanie Nebehay

Reuters

April 12, 2018

DHAKA/GENEVA -- The United Nations refugee agency is set to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bangladesh laying out a framework for the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, an agency spokesman said on Wednesday.

The MoU is aimed at establishing cooperation between the UN agency and Bangladesh “on the safe, voluntary, and dignified returns of refugees in line with international standards, if and when the conditions are conducive to returns,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Andrej Mahecic. 

Mahecic and Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Mohammad Shahidul Haque said the MoU will be signed on Friday in Geneva. 

Another Bangladeshi official involved in the discussions said the MoU is likely to lay out that the UNHCR will vet all refugees being repatriated to ensure that the process is 100 percent voluntary. 

“The whole return process will be operated as per the UNHCR, so there will be no force put on the refugee to go back,” said the source. 

Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a military crackdown and crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since August. The refugees are living in cramped camps at Cox’s Bazar, and Bangladesh is keen to urge the refugees to return home soon, especially with the oncoming monsoons expected to cause major devastation at the camps.

The official, who asked not to be named as he was not authorized to discuss matters with the media, said the UNHCR is expected to run a few transit sites along the border that will house refugees before they are transferred to temporary resettlement shelters in Rakhine State. 

The official added that the U.N. body is expected to arrange sufficient funds to run the repatriation programme and that both the parties would conduct promotional activities urging people to return to Myanmar. 

A Myanmar minister told Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh on Wednesday that their repatriation was a priority, in the first visit by a top Myanmar official since last year’s exodus. 

The bilateral MoU would be an early step in the process; work on a deal involving Bangladesh, Myanmar and the UNHCR is ongoing. That tripartite deal would aim to provide guarantees around the resettlement and safety of those that agree to be repatriated, along with assurances that officials of the UNHCR will be allowed to regularly inspect these sites. 

Htin Lynn, Myanmar’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told Reuters later on Wednesday that he was confident that his country could reach a deal with UNHCR by the end of April covering safe and voluntary repatriation. 

Writing by Euan Rocha; editing by Mike Collett-White

By Andrew R.C. Marshall

Reuters

April 12, 2018

KUTUPALONG REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh -- Rehana Khatun dreamed her husband came home. He appeared without warning in their village in western Myanmar, outside their handsome wooden house shaded by mango trees. “He didn’t say anything,” she said. “He was only there for a few seconds, and then he was gone.” Then Rehana Khatun woke up.

She woke up in a shack of ragged tarpaulin on a dusty hillside in Bangladesh. Her husband, Nur Mohammed, is never coming home. He was one of 10 Rohingya Muslim men massacred last September by Myanmar soldiers and Rakhine Buddhists at the coastal village of Inn Din. 

(FOR AN INTERACTIVE VERSION OF THIS STORY - click here) 

Rehana Khatun’s handsome wooden house is gone, too. So is everything in it. The Rohingya homes in Inn Din were burned to the ground, and what was once a close-knit community, with generations of history in Myanmar, is now scattered across the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh. 

A Reuters investigation in February revealed what happened to the 10 Rohingya men. On September 1, soldiers snatched them from a large group of Rohingya villagers detained by a beach near Inn Din. The next morning, according to eyewitnesses, the men were shot by the soldiers or hacked to death by their Rakhine Buddhist neighbors. Their bodies were dumped in a shallow grave. 

The relatives the 10 men left behind that afternoon wouldn’t learn of the killings for many months - in some cases, not until Reuters reporters tracked them down in the refugee camps and told them what had happened. The survivors waited by the beach with rising anxiety and dread as the sun set and the men didn’t return. 

This is their story. Three of them fled Inn Din while heavily pregnant. All trekked north in monsoon rain through forests and fields. Drenched and terrified, they dodged military patrols and saw villages abandoned or burning. Some saw dead bodies. They walked for days with little food or water. 

They were not alone. Inn Din’s families joined nearly 700,000 Rohingya escaping a crackdown by the Myanmar military, launched after attacks by Rohingya militants on August 25. The United Nations called it “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” which Myanmar has denied. 

On Tuesday, the military said it had sentenced seven soldiers to long prison terms for their role in the Inn Din massacre. Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay told Reuters the move was a “very positive step” that showed the military “won’t give impunity for those who have violated the rules of engagement.” Myanmar, he said, doesn’t allow systematic human rights abuses. 

Reuters was able to corroborate many but not all details of the personal accounts in this story. 

The Rohingya streamed north until they reached the banks of the Naf River. On its far shore lay Bangladesh, and safety. Many Inn Din women gave boatmen their jewelry to pay for the crossing; others begged and fought their way on board. They made the perilous crossing at night, vomiting with sickness and fear. 

Now in Bangladesh, they struggle to piece together their lives without husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. Seven months have passed since the massacre, but the grief of Inn Din’s survivors remains raw. One mother told Reuters her story, then fainted. 

Like Rehana Khatun, they all say they dream constantly about the dead. Some dreams are bittersweet - a husband coming home, a son praying in the mosque - and some are nightmares. One woman says she sees her husband clutching a stomach wound, blood oozing through his fingers. 

Daytime brings little relief. They all remember, with tormenting clarity, the day the soldiers took their men away. 

“ALLAH SAVED ME” 

Abdul Amin still wonders why he was spared. 

Soldiers had arrived at Inn Din on August 27 and started torching the houses of Rohingya residents with the help of police and Rakhine villagers. Amin, 19, said he and his family sought refuge in a nearby forest with more than a hundred other Rohingya. 

Four days later, as Inn Din burned and the sound of gunfire crackled through the trees, they made a dash for the beach, where hundreds of villagers gathered in the hope of escaping the military crackdown. Then the soldiers appeared, said Amin, and ordered them to squat with their heads down. 

Amin crouched next to his mother, Nurasha, who threw her scarf over his head. The soldiers ignored Amin, perhaps mistaking him for a woman, but dragged away his brother Shaker Ahmed. “I don’t know why they chose him and not me,” Amin said. “Allah saved me.” 

The soldiers, according to Amin and other witnesses, said they were taking the men away for a “meeting.” Their distraught families waited by the beach in vain. As night fell, they returned to the forest where, in the coming days, they made the decision that haunts many of them still: to save themselves and their families by fleeing to Bangladesh - and leaving the captive men behind. 

Abdu Shakur waited five days for the soldiers to release his son Rashid Ahmed, 18. By then, most Rohingya had set out for Bangladesh and the forest felt lonely and exposed. Abdu Shakur said he wanted to leave, too, but his wife, Subiya Hatu, refused. 

“I won’t go without my son,” she said. 

“You must come with me,” he said. “If we stay here, they’ll kill us all.” They had three younger children to bring to safety, he told her. Rashid was their oldest, a bright boy who loved to study; he would surely be released soon and follow them. He didn’t. Rashid was one of the 10 killed in the Inn Din massacre. 

“We did the right thing,” says Abdu Shakur today, in a shack in the Kutupalong camp. “I feel terrible, but we had to leave that place.” As he spoke, his wife sat behind him and sobbed into her headscarf. 

“DAY OF JUDGMENT” 

By now, the northward exodus was gathering pace. The Rohingya walked in large groups, sometimes thousands strong, stretching in ragged columns along the wild Rakhine coastline. At night, the men stood guard while women and children rested beneath scraps of tarpaulin. Rain often made sleep impossible. 

Amid this desperate throng was Shaker Ahmed’s wife, Rahama Khatun, who was seven months pregnant, and their eight children, aged one to 18. Like many Rohingya, they had escaped Inn Din with little more than the clothes they wore. “We brought nothing from the house, not even a single plate,” she said. 

They survived the journey by drinking from streams and scrounging food from other refugees. Rahama said she heaved herself along slippery paths as quickly as she could. She was scared about the health of her unborn child, but terrified of getting left behind. 

Rahama’s legs swelled up so much that she couldn’t walk. “My children carried me on their shoulders. They said, ‘We’ve lost our father. We don’t want to lose you.’” Then they reached the beach at Na Khaung To, and a new ordeal began. 

Na Khaung To sits on the Myanmar side of the Naf River. Bangladesh is about 6 km (4 miles) away. For Rohingya from Inn Din and other coastal villages, Na Khaung To was the main crossing point. 

It was also a bottleneck. There were many Bangladeshi fishing boats to smuggle Rohingya across the river, but getting on board depended on the money or valuables the refugees could muster and the mercy of the boatmen. Some were stranded at Na Khaung To for weeks. 

The beach was teeming with sick, hungry and exhausted people, recalled Nurjan, whose son Nur Mohammed was one of the 10 men killed at Inn Din. “Everyone was desperate,” Nurjan said. “All you could see was heads in every direction. It was like the Day of Judgment.” 

CROSSING THE NAF 

Bangladesh was perhaps a two-hour ride across calm estuarine waters. But the boatmen wanted to avoid any Bangladesh navy or border guard vessels that might be patrolling the river. So they set off at night, taking a more circuitous route through open ocean. Most boats were overloaded. Some sank in the choppy water, drowning dozens of people.

The boatmen charged about 8,000 taka (about $100) per person. Some women paid with their earrings and nose-rings. Others, like Abdu Shakur, promised to reimburse the boatman upon reaching Bangladesh with money borrowed from relatives there. 

He and his wife, Subiya Hatu, who had argued over leaving their oldest son behind at Inn Din, set sail for Bangladesh. Another boat of refugees sailed along nearby. Both vessels were heaving with passengers, many of them children. 

In deeper water, Abdu Shakur watched with horror as the other boat began to capsize, spilling its passengers into the waves. “We could hear people crying for help,” he said. “It was impossible to rescue them. Our boat would have sunk, too.” 

Abdu Shakur and his family made it safely to Bangladesh. So did the other families bereaved by the Inn Din massacre. During the crossing, some realized they would never see their men again, or Myanmar. 

Shuna Khatu wept on the boat. She felt she already knew what the military had done to her husband, Habizu. She was pregnant with their third child. “They killed my husband. They burned my house. They destroyed our village,” she said. “I knew I’d never go back.” 

THE ONLY PHOTO 

Two months later, in a city-sized refugee camp in Bangladesh, Shuna Khatu gave birth to a boy. She called him Mohammed Sadek. 

Rahama Khatun, who fled Myanmar on the shoulders of her older children while seven months pregnant, also had a son. His name is Sadikur Rahman. 

The two women were close neighbors in Inn Din. They now live about a mile apart in Kutupalong-Balukhali, a so-called “mega-camp” of about 600,000 souls. Both survive on twice-a-month rations of rice, lentils and cooking oil. They live in flimsy, mud-floored shacks of bamboo and plastic that the coming monsoon could blow or wash away. 

It was here, as the families struggled to rebuild their lives, that they learned their men were dead. Some heard the news from Reuters reporters who had tracked them down. Others saw the Reuters investigation of the Inn Din massacre or the photos that accompanied it. 

Two of those photos showed the men kneeling with their hands behind their backs or necks. A third showed the men’s bodies in a mass grave. The photos were obtained by Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were arrested in December while investigating the Inn Din massacre. The two face charges, and potentially 14-year jail sentences, under Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act. 

Rahama Khatun cropped her husband’s image from one of the photos and laminated it. This image of him kneeling before his captors is the only one she has. Every other family photo was burned along with their home at Inn Din.

For the Rohingya crisis in graphics, click here

By Associated Press

April 11, 2018

DHAKA, Bangladesh — A Myanmar Cabinet minister on Wednesday visited a sprawling refugee camp in Bangladesh for Rohingya Muslims, who described the violence that forced them to flee Myanmar and presented a list of demands for their repatriation.

Social Welfare Minister Win Myat Aye met with about 40 Rohingya refugees at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar for more than an hour, sometimes exchanging heated words.

A Rohingya leader, Abdur Rahim, said at least eight rape victims were among those who met with Win Myat Aye. Rahim said the group presented 13 demands for the government to meet for their return to Myanmar.

About 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled army-led violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar since last August and are living in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. The two countries agreed in December to begin repatriating them in January, but they were delayed by concerns among aid workers and Rohingya that they would be forced to return and face unsafe conditions in Myanmar.

Hundreds of Rohingya were reportedly killed in the recent violence, and many houses and villages were burned to the ground. The United Nations and the U.S. have described the army crackdown as “ethnic cleansing.”

Bangladesh has given Myanmar a list of more than 8,000 refugees to begin the repatriation, but it has been further delayed by a complicated verification process.

Win Myat Aye did not specify a timeframe for the repatriation but said it should begin as soon as possible.

Rahim said the group became angry when Win Myat Aye said the Rohingya refugees must accept national verification cards to be provided by Myanmar in which they state they are migrants from Bangladesh.

“We protested,” he said. “We have told him it is not acceptable, we belong to Burma (Myanmar),” he told The Associated Press by phone.

Rohingya Muslims have long been treated as outsiders in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless. They are denied freedom of movement and other basic rights.

Rahim said they demanded to be recognized as citizens of Myanmar before the repatriation starts and that their security arrangements be supervised by the United Nations.

“We told him clearly we want to go back and we want our home, our land and everything back,” he said.

Rohingya who have been repatriated in the past after previous refugee exoduses have been forced to live in camps in Myanmar.

Rahim said the rape victims described their experiences to Win Myat Aye.

“He listened to them patiently and said they will punish those responsible,” Rahim said.

He said the minister mentioned that authorities have already investigated some cases and that 10 soldiers have been sentenced to 10 years in jail for rape.

“He promised that once we are back, they will continue their investigation and punish those responsible,” he said.

“After initial hiccups, we discussed our points in a friendly manner,” Rahim said.

Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner, Abul Kalam, said the minister listened to the refugees and replied to their questions.

“He has come here to talk to their people. They talked, we just provided them that support,” Kalam said by phone from Cox’s Bazar.

Police superintendent A.K.M. Iqbal Hossain said the minister praised Bangladesh’s government and international agencies for their work in supporting the Rohingya people.

“He seemed to be serious about his words,” Hossain said.

The recent violence erupted after an insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, attacked security outposts in Rakhine in late August. The military and Buddhist mobs launched retaliatory attacks on Rohingya that were termed “clearance operations.”

Win Myat Aye, who arrived on Wednesday for a three-day visit, also is to meet with Bangladeshi officials including the home minister and foreign minister.

Associated Press reporter in Cox’s Bazar Tofayel Ahmad contributed to the story.