Myanmar plays fast and loose with truth

Repatriation scheme for Rohingya is a shameful sham perpetrated by criminal conspirators

Eight months ago, Myanmar’s government, security forces, military and a broad swath of its people, purposefully and wilfully set out on a deliberate and wanton crusade of hate, violence and murder against the Rohingya in the northwest Rakhine state with the sole intent to drive the Muslim-minority people from their nation. During this coordinated and carefully choreographed campaign, countless hundreds of Rohingya were butchered while some 700,000 left everything behind and fled to refugee camps mostly at Cox’s Bazaar in neighbouring Bangladesh. And just to make the process of fleeing even more traumatic, Myanmar’s military laid minefields along the Bangladesh border to kill and maim as many more Rohingya as possible.

This background and brutal nature of the Rohingya crisis is important to remember, for when the Myanmarese government announced earlier this year that it had reached an agreement with Bangladesh to repatriate the Rohingya refugees, there wasn’t an overwhelming or warm welcome to the development. Incredulity was more the sentiment, so too suspicion, mistrust and downright disbelief at this sudden and unexpected volte face. And frankly, all those reactions were and remain perfectly legitimate — more so in the light of the most recent and blatant mistruth offered by Myanmar’s government that the repatriation had begun and is successful. It widely publicised one family of five being greeted by welcoming aid officials, describing them as ‘Muslims’ for it does not recognise the Rohingya as a separate people. And in this era of fake news, that photo op was indeed just fake news, with the family being later identified as relatives of one of the aid officials.

But what now for the Rohingya, living in refugee camps and dependent on the generosity of nations like the UAE? Despite what Myanmar tries to portray and what the Bangladeshi government would like to be true, the current scheme to repatriate the refugees is a whitewash. None have taken up the offer for nothing has changed within Myanmar.

What the Rohingya need is justice, knowing that those who plotted their genocide and exodus must be held accountable for crimes against humanity. And justice requires that the international community establish a criminal tribunal to hold these murderers to account, in the same way as officials in Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia were held to account. Anything less means the Rohingya have been abandoned and left to their long-term fate in Cox’s Bazaar.