Yangon - Myanmar plans to repatriate some 700 000 Muslim
Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh to 11 "new villages," a senior
official said on Thursday, bringing warnings from activists of
further repression of the minority group.
Foreign Affairs Ministry Permanent Secretary Myint Thu told dpa said
that a first group of 374 Rohingya refugees had been verified for
repatriation and would return "within weeks," first to a transit camp
and then a "new village with security" close to their original homes.
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have said they were violently driven
from their villages in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine by national
security forces in a campaign of killings, rape and arson that began
in August last year.
Myanmar has said legitimate security operations were carried out to
restore law and order following deadly Rohingya militant attacks on
August 25.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch,
criticized Myanmar's repatriation plans.
"This model is totally unacceptable to both the Rohingya and the
international community because it will lead to the kind of
systematic repression of rights seen in the internally displaced
persons camps west of Sittwe [Rakhine State capital], including
restrictions on movement, livelihoods, and access to food, medicine
and other basic services," he told dpa on Thursday.
Chris Lewa, of the Arakan Project, echoed these concerns: "If
refugees do go back [to these new villages] they will be living in an
internally displaced persons camp, like other areas of Rakhine State
where they are restricted from leaving," she said.
The unanimous stance of Rohingya in Bangladesh camps, she told dpa by
phone on Thursday, was that they would not return to Myanmar unless
they were guaranteed freedom and equal rights with all Myanmar
citizens."
On Monday, Amnesty International said hundreds of Rohingya villages
in Rakhine were being bulldozed and developed with military
infrastructure.
Rights groups and the UN have said Rohingya returns should be
voluntary, safe and to their place of origin - not to fabricated
villages or camps.
Myint Thu said Myanmar was ready to work with UN agencies on
repatriations and that a proposal by UNHCR and UNDP was being
assessed by the office of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi.
The UN had delivered "a concept note to outline how conditions for
the safe, dignified and voluntary return of refugees ... could be
created with support from these agencies," a UN statement Wednesday
said.
At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, Myanmar refuted
UN claims that government actions in Rakhine "bear the hallmarks of
genocide."