[The deal, which was brokered without the involvement of the international community, does not address issues that Rohingya refugees and aid groups say are key: safety, citizenship and sustainable housing. Without those guarantees, many refugees are unlikely to repatriate voluntarily, experts say, potentially prolonging what U.N. officials have referred to as “the most urgent refugee emergency in the world.”]
By Victoria
Milko
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A police officer stands
guard Jan. 24 in Taungpyo township, a border town in Burma’s
northern Rakhine state,
outside new repatriation camps prepared for Rohingya
refugees expected to
return from Bangladesh. (Thein Zaw/AP)
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RANGOON,
Burma — For the 650,000 Rohingya
Muslims who have sought refuge in Bangladesh since August, returning to Burma
is no simple matter.
Violence drove them from their homes, and hundreds of their
villages were burned or razed. When they crossed into Bangladesh, they were met
with sprawling, squalid camps dotted with thousands of temporary tents and
plagued by disease.
Five months after the violence began, Burma and Bangladesh were
on the brink of repatriating up to 1,500 Rohingya people last week, with plans
to return all “eligible” refugees over two years under an agreement widely
criticized by the United Nations and aid groups, which warn that it could
thrust the refugees back into danger in Burma.
The deal, which was brokered without the involvement of the
international community, does not address issues that Rohingya refugees and aid
groups say are key: safety, citizenship and sustainable housing. Without those
guarantees, many refugees are unlikely to repatriate voluntarily, experts say,
potentially prolonging what U.N. officials have referred to as “the most urgent
refugee emergency in the world.”
“As of today, the necessary safeguards for potential returnees
are absent, and there are continued restrictions on access for aid agencies,
the media and other independent observers,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said
Jan. 23 in a briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
Bangladeshi authorities delayed the planned start of the returns
last week, and it remains unclear when they will begin. Refugees have held
several protests in recent weeks inside the camps in Bangladesh in opposition
to the repatriation deal.
The Burmese government said last week that it was prepared to
begin the repatriation process.
“No matter what, from our side, Myanmar is ready to start the
process,’’ said Win Myat Aye, Burma’s social welfare minister, using another
name for the country.
According to the terms of the agreement, voluntary refugees who
are able to prove past residency in Burma and show that they left after Oct. 9,
2016 — documentation most refugees lack — will be allowed back into the country
and issued “national verification cards.” Approved refugees will then be moved
to state-built camps, where they will remain until their destroyed homes are
rebuilt. Those who are not on what the deal calls a “list of eligible
returnees” will be sent back to Bangladesh.
From there, details of the deal quickly become hazy, with no
mention of continued security, citizenship past the initial verification cards,
or the guarantee of freedom of movement outside the camps — something Rohingya
people have lacked in previously established camps in Burma.
“Refugees on the Bangladesh side of the border are telling us
about their fears of returning,” said Matthew Smith, chief executive of Fortify
Rights, a human rights group. “There’s a fear that the Rohingya will be brought
back to a situation of mass arbitrary confinement.”
The deal comes months after Aung San Suu Kyi, the government’s
de facto leader, announced that Burma would embrace recommendations made by the
U.N.’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, which includes granting broader
access for journalists and aid organizations, providing security for all
groups, and the revision of the current restrictive citizenship laws.
Yet there has been little tangible progress in implementing the
recommendations.
“The government of Myanmar is trying to convince the world that
it’s doing the right things without making any fundamental changes on the
ground,” Smith said. “We’ve seen this in establishment of various commissions
where authorities have tried to convince the international community that
they’re taking seriously the allegation of human rights violations and
investigating them, when really they’ve been a series of whitewashes.”
The violence began in August, when militant Rohingya people
attacked Burmese police, prompting a military crackdown that included reports
of rape, widespread arson and extrajudicial killings, with estimates as high as
6,700 dead. Both U.N. and U.S. officials have referred to the violence as “ethnic
cleansing.”
The government of Burma has denied accusations of widespread
atrocities committed against the Rohingya.
“Rohingya refugees shouldn’t be returned to camps guarded by the
very same Burmese forces who forced them to flee massacres and gang rapes, and
torched villages,” said Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s
Asia Division, in a statement.
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority from
Burma’s western Rakhine state who have faced decades of persecution. Many in
Burma — a predominantly Buddhist nation — consider the Rohingya to be illegal
immigrants from Bangladesh and have largely supported nationalist campaigns
that call for the removal of them from the country. Even the term “Rohingya” is
widely rejected in Burma, where they are commonly referred to as “Bengali.”
The most recent repatriation initiative is
not the first for Rohingya refugees fleeing from Burma to Bangladesh.
In the late 1970s, thousands of Rohingya
refugees starved to death after Bangladeshi authorities cut food rations in
camps in an attempt to force refugees back. In the 1990s, Bangladesh deported
thousands of unwilling Rohingya refugees who had fled brutal clearance
operations conducted by the Burmese military.
In 2012, more than 120,000 Rohingya people
fleeing violence were placed in “temporary” camps throughout Rakhine state.
Unlike the 650,000 Rohingya now languishing in Bangladesh who were forced from
their villages, those in camps for internally displaced people remain in Burma
and suffer from restrictions on access to humanitarian aid and freedom of
movement. Even going to a hospital outside the camps requires written
permission from government officials — a fate many fear awaits refugees
returning to the country.
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