Five new Rohingya mass graves uncovered UN BLAMES ARMY
• The existence of five new Rohingya mass graves was revealed Thursday as further evidence of the systematic slaughter of the persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state since last August. The reports, verified by The Associated Press through multiple witnesses from Gu Dar Pyin village and by time stamps on phone footage of corpses, attribute new atrocities to a military crackdown that now appears to have involved crimes against humanity. Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special envoy on human rights in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, said yesterday that the military’s operations against the Rohingya bore “the hallmarks of a genocide.” She said that she could not make a definitive declaration about genocide until a credible international tribunal or court had weighed the evidence, but “we are seeing signs and it is building up to that.” The fresh evidence strengthens fears that the planned repatriation of some 750,000 refugees, currently sheltering in squalid conditions in neighbouring Bangladesh, is “premature” and cannot guarantee their rights or safety. Bangladesh and Myanmar had pledged to repatriate the refugees within two years, but the start date last week was delayed for logistical reasons. Myanmar is racing to construct reception camps for the returnees, but the first pictures to emerge of plywood homes surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by soldiers have reinforced claims by rights groups that the Rohingya will be forced into grim ghettos. The plans sparked demonstrations among refugees, whose leaders want a say in their own future, and that their rights and citizenship are guaranteed. The UN Refugee Agency, which is not party to the bilateral repatriation talks, warned that any return should be based on informed and voluntary choice. Even the bleak misery of Bangladesh’s Kutupalong, now the most densely populated refugee camp in the world, is not proving to be an incentive to push fearful refugees back home. Refugees interviewed by The Daily Telegraph last week said they had been too traumatized by the violence to go back. “My house was burnt down, properties were lost, my nine-month-old daughter, Nur Kalima, was burnt alive by the military,” said Gul Bahar, 35, from Udong in Rakhine’s Maungdauw district. She said her 70-year-old mother had drowned during the desperate escape into Bangladesh across the Naf river. “If I go back, they will persecute us even more harshly than before and will force us to flee again. There is no safety,” she said. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch said the revelations of mass graves in Gu Dar Pyin “raised the stakes” for the international community to act.