[Meanwhile, the cyclone season may begin in Bangladesh as early as next month, threatening to turn the Rohingya camps into a muddy mess in which disease can thrive. As flooding worsens in the summer, at least 100,000 people may have to be moved from their current shelters because of the threat of landslides on recently denuded hills.]
By Hannah Beech
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Rohingya refugees after
crossing from Myanmar into Bangladesh in August.
Credit Tomas Munita for
The New York Times
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BANGKOK
— A senior cabinet minister
and army general from Myanmar arrived in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Thursday to
discuss a trouble-plagued scheme to repatriate Rohingya Muslims who fled
military assaults and now are in camps in Bangladesh.
In less than half a year, around 700,000
Rohingya escaped attacks in their home state, Rakhine, and what the
international community has called ethnic cleansing by Myanmar’s security
forces.
The Myanmar government insists it is
committed to the repatriation of those Rohingya who can prove they recently
left Rakhine. The Bangladeshi side says the same.
But few expect that the two days of meetings
between Lt. Gen. Kyaw Swe, Myanmar’s home minister, and Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal,
his Bangladeshi counterpart, will elicit much action. Over months of sporadic
talks, each side has blamed the other for failing to put in place a voluntary
repatriation agreement signed in November.
On Monday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of
Bangladesh called on the international community to increase pressure on
Myanmar to take back the Rohingya.
“The
problem has been created on the other side of the border, and the solution to
this problem also lies there,” Ms. Hasina said while on a visit to Vatican
City. “That’s why the bigger responsibility of implementing the agreement lies
on Myanmar’s shoulders, but we haven’t gotten that kind of response from
Myanmar yet.”
The authorities in Myanmar are pointing
fingers the other way.
“We are ready for repatriation, but the
Bangladesh side is not ready yet,” said U Zaw Htay, the spokesman for Myanmar’s
presidential office, on Thursday.
What neither side is fully talking about is
what the Rohingya Muslims, who do not have a formal representative in the talks,
want to happen.
Do
the Rohingya want to return?
A long-persecuted Muslim minority, the
Rohingya began fleeing Myanmar in huge numbers last August when attacks on
Myanmar security posts by Rohingya insurgents unleashed a brutal military
response. Hundreds of Rohingya villages were burned to the ground by security
forces and associated mobs of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.
At least 6,700 Rohingya met violent deaths in
Rakhine in the month after the military’s scorched-earth campaign, according to
Doctors Without Borders. Rohingya women physically traumatized by rape continue
to cross the border into Bangladesh.
Myanmar’s civilian administration, however,
refuses to admit to any systematic wrongdoing by the nation’s military.
Independent journalists and human rights investigators have not been allowed
access to the epicenter of violence in Northern Rakhine, and two Reuters
reporters who documented a mass killing with chilling detail remain jailed in
Myanmar.
The continuing refusal by Myanmar’s
authorities to acknowledge any atrocities against Rohingya civilians worries
many of those sheltering in Bangladesh.
“We will go back, but we must be given
safety,” said Mohammed Zahid Alam, a Rohingya who now lives in the Balukhali
refugee camp in Bangladesh. “We want a peaceful life.”
Beyond the fundamental issue of security,
most Rohingya have little interest in returning to a country that has denied
them basic rights, like freedom of movement and higher education. Myanmar’s
government considers the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Most have been stripped of their Myanmar citizenship, even though they have
long roots in the region.
Rohingya community leaders in the Bangladesh
camps say they will return only if Myanmar’s government gives them the same
rights it has given the country’s dozens of other ethnic minority groups.
“Our demands are known to all,” said Mohammed
Osman, who arrived in Bangladesh in early September and is now a deputy camp
block chief. “We want full citizenship rights.”
Why
does Bangladesh want them to go?
Bangladesh is an overcrowded and flood-prone
nation. And with more Rohingya now crammed into the border district where their
camps are located than there are native Bangladeshis, political and economic
concerns are beginning to trump the remarkable hospitality that many residents
have shown the refugees.
To provide shelter for the influx of
Rohingya, vast tracts of forest and farmland have been cleared. Prices for
everything from building supplies to cooking oil have skyrocketed, while local
wages have declined because of a sudden surge in Rohingya desperate for any
kind of work.
Ms. Hasina has made her welcome of the
Rohingya part of her political lore. In Cox’s Bazar, the town nearest the
camps, posters proclaim her as the “mother of humanity.” But with an election
season underway in Bangladesh, the Rohingya could well turn into a political
liability for Ms. Hasina’s governing Awami League.
Bangladesh’s government says it is proceeding
with a controversial plan to turn an uninhabited, low-lying island in the Bay
of Bengal into a new shelter for the Rohingya.
Meanwhile, the cyclone season may begin in
Bangladesh as early as next month, threatening to turn the Rohingya camps into
a muddy mess in which disease can thrive. As flooding worsens in the summer, at
least 100,000 people may have to be moved from their current shelters because
of the threat of landslides on recently denuded hills.
Still, even the question of who would pay for
the repatriation has yet to be answered, much less whether Myanmar is willing
to halt violence against the Rohingya.
When
are repatriations to begin?
Last month, technically.
In the repatriation agreement signed last
November, Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to the return of willing Rohingya who
could prove they had fled to Bangladesh since October 2016, when an earlier
Rohingya insurgent assault catalyzed a smaller exodus. The repatriation process
was supposed to begin by Jan. 23. That deadline was quietly delayed without
much clarity on when the new start date for repatriations might be.
A further agreement was signed in
mid-January, stipulating that Rohingya returns should be completed within a
two-year period. But apart from a token number of people who have returned to
Myanmar, including some Hindu families, no one is rushing back.
Further, human rights groups accuse Myanmar
of doing little to create safe conditions for repatriation.
“Burmese authorities have shown no ability to
ensure the safe, dignified and voluntary return of Rohingya refugees as
provided by international standards,” said a statement from Human Rights Watch.
Myanmar officials have said that they will be
able to process up to 300 people a day, five days a week, once the repatriation
system is set in motion. But if all the Rohingya who escaped to Bangladesh
since October 2016 wanted to return home, it would take almost a decade.
Where
would Rohingya returnees live?
The Myanmar government has built camps, rows
of grim longhouses in Rakhine in which repatriated Rohingya are supposed to
stay for an unspecified period of time. The compounds are surrounded by
barbed-wire fences and bear an uncomfortable similarity to concentration camps.
There is little in the way of trees or shade — and no signs of accessible
fields or paddies that could support Rohingya communities.
Human Rights Watch has called these camps
“open-air prisons.”
When and if the Rohingya would be allowed to
return to their own villages, many of which were razed by fire, is not clear.
Myanmar has begun transferring some land that it terms “abandoned” to other
owners.
The case of Rohingya who suffered from an
earlier outbreak of violence is cautionary. In 2012, communal clashes forced
urban Rohingya in central Rakhine from their homes. More than five years later,
around 120,000 Rohingya are still confined to what had been deemed temporary
camps. (Others fled by rickety boats to other parts of Southeast Asia,
dangerous journeys that claimed hundreds of lives.)
Unable to leave the camps without special
permission, the Rohingya remaining in central Rakhine are dependent on aid to
survive. Yet international aid groups say that since the Rohingya insurgent
attacks last August it has been much more difficult to deliver food and other
necessities to these ghettos.
Earlier this week, Myanmar’s state news media
announced that the camps in central Rakhine would be closed but gave no details
of what would happen to their inhabitants.
Mr. Zaw Htay, the presidential spokesman,
confirmed that the camps in Sittwe, Myebon and Kyaukphyu will be shuttered.
“We will relocate the refugees to appropriate
places,” he said. “Now we don’t want to tell the media where we will relocate
them.”
Saw Nang contributed reporting from Mandalay,
Myanmar.
