Resettlement plan opposed
Government harvests ‘ownerless’ rice crops left by stateless refugees
ROHINGYA Muslims who return to Myanmar after fleeing to Bangladesh are unlikely to be able to reclaim their land, and may find their crops have been harvested and sold by the government, according to officials.
Nearly 600 000 Rohingya have crossed the border since August 25, when co-ordinated Rohingya insurgent attacks on security posts sparked a ferocious counter-offensive by the Myanmar army.
The UN says killings, arson and rape carried out by troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist mobs since late August amount to a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.
Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has no control over the military, has pledged that anyone sheltering in Bangladesh who can prove they were Myanmar residents can return.
Jamil Ahmed, who spoke to Reuters at a refugee camp in Bangladesh, is one of many Rohingya who hope to go back.
Describing how he fled his home in northern Rakhine state in late August, Ahmed said one of the few things he grabbed was a stack of papers – land contracts and receipts – that might prove ownership of the fields and crops he was leaving behind.
“I didn’t carry any ornaments or jewels,” said the 35 year old. “I’ve only got these documents. In Myanmar, you need to present documents to prove everything.”
The stack of papers, browning and torn at the edges, may not be enough, however, to regain the land in Kyauk Pan Du village, where he grew potatoes, chilli plants, almonds and rice.
“It depends on them. There is no land ownership for those who don’t have citizenship,” said Kyaw Lwin, agriculture minister in Rakhine state, when asked whether refugees who returned to Myanmar could reclaim land and crops.
Despite his land holdings, Myanmar does not recognise Ahmed as a citizen. Nearly all the more than 1 million Rohingya who lived in Myanmar before the recent exodus are stateless, despite many tracing their families in the country for generations.
Officials have made plans to harvest, and possibly sell, thousands of acres of crops left behind by the fleeing Rohingya, according to state government documents.
Myanmar also intends to settle most refugees who return to Rakhine state in new “model villages”, rather than on the land they previously occupied, an approach criticised in the past by the UN as effectively creating permanent camps.
The government has not asked for help from any international agencies, who are calling for any repatriation to be voluntary and to the refugees’ place of origin.
The exodus of 589 000 Rohingya – and about 30 000 non-Muslims – from the conflict zone in northern Rakhine has left tens of thousands of hectares of planted rice paddy abandoned and in need of harvesting by January.
Tables in the documents divide the land into paddy sown by “national races” (Myanmar citizens) or “Bengalis,” a term widely used to refer to the Rohingya, but which they reject as implying they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
Kyaw Lwin, the state minister, confirmed the plans, and said there was a total of 18 210ha of “ownerless Bengali land”.
Rakhine state secretary Tin Maung Swe said: “The land was abandoned. There is no one to reap that, so the government ordered to harvest it.”
Human Rights Watch (HRW) deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said the government should at least guarantee that the rice would be used for humanitarian support and not for profit.
“You can’t call a rice crop ‘ownerless’ just because you used violence and arson to drive the owners out of the country,” he said.
Many refugees are fearful to return and are sceptical of Myanmar’s guarantees. Those who do decide to cross back into Myanmar will first be received at one of two centres.
International donors, who have fed and cared for more than 120 000 mostly Rohingya “internally displaced persons” in supposedly temporary camps in Rakhine since violence in 2012, have told Myanmar they will not support more camps.
According to HRW, 288 villages, mostly Rohingya settlements, have been fully or partially razed by fires since August 25.
Refugees say the army and Buddhist mobs were responsible for most of the arson. The government says Rohingya militants and residents burnt the homes for propaganda purposes.
The hamlets where Rohingya farmers lived were “not systematic”, and should be rebuilt in smaller settlements of 1 000 households set out in straight rows to enable development, said Soe Aung, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement.
“In some villages there are three houses here, four houses over there. For example, there’s no road for fire engines when fire burns the villages,” Soe Aung said.
Officials will accept as evidence “national verification” cards handed out in an ongoing government effort to register Rohingya, but that falls short of citizenship. – Reuters