Burma takes back Rohingya refugees

BURMA has accepted what appears to be the first five among some 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled military-led violence against the minority group.

This is despite the United Nations saying it is not yet safe for them to return home.

A government statement said five members of a family returned to western Rakhine state from a refugee camp across the border in Bangladesh.

The statement said that authorities determined whether they had lived in the country and provided them with a national verification card – a form of ID that doesn’t equate to citizenship.

Rohingya have been denied citizenship in Buddhist-majority Burma, where they have faced persecution for decades. The statement did not say if any more repatriations are being planned.

Bangladesh has given Burma, also known as Myanmar, a list of more than 8,000 refugees to begin the repatriation, but it has been further delayed by a complicated verification process.

The two countries agreed in December to begin repatriating them in January, but they were delayed by concerns among aid workers and Rohingya that they would be forced to return and face unsafe conditions in Burma.

Hundreds of Rohingya were reportedly killed in the recent violence, and many houses and villages burned to the ground. US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has again called former FBI director James Comey a “slimeball” ahead of the publication of his new book. In the book, A Higher Loyalty, Mr Comey compares Mr Trump to a mafia don and calls his leadership of the country “ego driven and about personal loyalty”.