REFUGEES TO BE REPATRIATED NEXT MONTH

Bangladesh to send ¾ million people home despite safety concerns

DHAKA

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NIKKI HALEY, US ambassador to UN few refugees wished to return to Myanmar, where many saw their villages burned to ashes and loved ones killed.

“We will not go back to our country until our rights are afforded,” said Rohingya refugee Roushan Ali from a camp in Bangladesh’s southeast.

“We want full citizenship and the return of our land and property. We also want justice for our people who were slaughtered, tortured and raped.”

Conditions remained bleak in displacement camps, with an outbreak of diphtheria having killed 21 refugees so far, the International Organisation for Migration said yesterday.

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s army said it was investigating a mass grave found in a village in Rakhine State. On Monday, Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the army’s “systematic killings and rape” of hundreds of Rohingya in Tula Toli village on Aug 30, adding new testimony to an event that had been documented by journalists and rights groups.

A statement on the army chief ’s Facebook page said a tip-off led officers to “unidentified dead bodies found at a cemetery in Inn Dinn village”, a community in Rakhine State’s Maungdaw township — the epicentre of the violence.

It did not specify how many corpses were found or what community they belonged to. AFP Panda cub Xiang Xiang crawling beside her mother, Shin Shin, at Tokyo Zoo yesterday. (inset) A baby fan wearing a panda costume among the visitors.