‘REFUGEE RETURN PLAN DECEITFUL’

Rohingya militants say it aims to trap refugees in long-term camps

ROHINGYA militants yesterday hit out at a repatriation plan for refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar set to begin next week, saying it aims to trap the Muslim minority in long-term camps while their ancestral lands are seized.

Bangladesh and Myanmar had agreed to send back around 750,000 refugees, who had arrived since October 2016, over the next two years — a process set to begin on Tuesday.

But, the deal had been pilloried by many Rohingya refugees, who said they did not want to return to Rakhine after fleeing atrocities, including murder, rape and arson attacks on their homes.

Rights groups and the United Nations said any repatriation must be voluntary, with safety assured in a state where communal hatred still ran sky high.

Concerns were also mounting about conditions in Myanmar, where hundreds of Rohingya villages had been razed by soldiers and Buddhist mobs, with fears that huge numbers of Rohingya would be confined for the long term in camps.

In a statement circulated on Twitter, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) said the “deceitfully and crookedly (repatriation) offering” would lock Rohingya in “so-called temporary camps... instead of allowing them to resettle in their own ancestral lands and villages”.

Citing the tens of thousands of internally displaced Rohingya people languishing in camps in Sittwe since communal violence in 2012, Arsa said Myanmar’s intention was to distribute Rohingya lands to industrial and agricultural projects.

The statement on @ARSA_Official handle said the aim was to “ensure a Buddhist majority” in Rakhine, meaning Rohingya “will never be able to settle down” in their own homes.

The state-backed Global New Light of Myanmar yesterday carried photos of one of the reception camps for refugees at Taung Pyo Letwe in Maungdaw, showing basic wooden structures closed off by high-wire fences.

The same outlet had, this week, carried several pages of coloured headshot photos of the alleged 1,000 or more wanted “Arsa Terrorists”.

The photos, which include women and young men, with their names and “father’s names”, have been circulated to Bangladeshi authorities, urging them to handover the suspects.

Dhaka is unhappy at the slow pace of the returns negotiated by Myanmar, with only a few hundred likely to be processed daily. AFP