Myanmar Army probing mass grave
Bangla, Myanmar reaffirm commitment to begin repatriating stateless Rohingya
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Dhaka, Geneva, Dec. 19: Bangladesh and Myanmar on Tuesday reaffirmed their commitment to begin repatriating Rohingya refugees from January, despite rights groups warning that their safety is still not assured should they return.
The foreign secretaries of Bangladesh and Myanmar met in Dhaka to finalise the agreement signed on November 23 for the voluntary return of nearly three- quarters of a million stateless Rohingya living in refugee camps along the border.
A new working group would “ensure commencement of repatriation within two months” by developing a timetable for the verification of refugee identities and logistics of their return, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Now, we will start the next step of our work,” Bangladesh foreign minister AH Mahmood Ali told reporters after the meeting.
The reaffirmation comes a day after Human Rights Watch, citing analysis of satellite imagery, said Myanmar’s Army burned down dozens of Rohingya homes within days of signing the repatriation deal with Bangladesh.
The watchdog said the deal was “a public relations stunt” and warned it contained no guarantee the Rohingya would be safe should they return to Myanmar’s conflictwracked Rakhine state.
An estimated 655,000 refugees from the stateless minority group have poured across the border into Bangladesh since August, fleeing what the US and United Nations have described as ethnic cleansing.
Last week the group Doctors Without Borders released a survey which found that nearly 7,000 Rohingya had been killed in the first month of the Rakhine violence.
The military has put the number in the hundreds and denied targeting civilians or committing atrocities, while Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi said major security operations stopped in early September.
Myanmar has in the past blamed fires in villages on Rohingya insurgents who on August 25 attacked security posts, killing a dozen police and triggering fierce army retribution.
Responding to international pressure, Suu Kyi’s civilian government signed an agreement with Bangladesh to start the repatriation of the stateless Muslim refugees within two months.
The agreement promises the “safe and voluntary return” of displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh — not just the latest 655,000 new arrivals but more than 70,000 from a separate influx in October 2016.
Testimonies gathered by the news agency from displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh suggest few refugees wish to return to Myanmar, where many saw their villages burned to ashes and loved ones killed.
Meanwhile, 21 people have died from diphtheria in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, adding that it had started a second vaccination drive to rein in the outbreak. Yangon, ( Myanmar), Dec. 19: Myanmar’s army says it is investigating a mass grave found in a village in northern Rakhine state, a region where the UN has accused troops of committing atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.
Northern Rakhine has been nearly emptied of its Muslim population since late August, when an army crackdown on Rohingya rebels sent more than 655,000 refugees fleeing across the border to Bangladesh.
The UN, US and rights groups have accused Myanmar of carrying out a systematic ethnic cleansing campaign against the stateless Muslim minority, with Doctors Without Borders estimating that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the first month of violence.
On Tuesday Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the Army’s “systematic killings and rape” of hundreds of Rohingya in Tula Toli village in northern Rakhine on August 30, adding new testimony to an event that has been documented by journalists and rights groups based on accounts from refugees.