Arakan News Agency
A Rohingya elder said that refugees who were encamped in a border area between Myanmar and Bangladesh after fleeing Myanmar would only accept to return, if they’re allowed to go back their villages, rejecting any move to camps inside Myanmar for fear of long-term detention.
“We have no intention of entering Bangladesh,” Dil Mohammed, 51, told reporters through barbed wire in an interview in the no-man’s land. We are not Bengali … we are native citizens of Myanmar. ”
Mohammed said the villagers – about 6,000 – will return to Myanmar only if their safety is ensured, compensated for burnt homes and given permission to resettle in their old villages.
“We do not want to go to temporary camps. We want to go directly to our homes, “referring to the sites set up by the Myanmar authorities to house returning refugees.
Concerns are growing that temporary camps and resettlement villages being built for returnees will become long-term detention centers.
More than 120,000 Rohingyas have already been held in squalid camps in Arakan outside the capital, Akyab, in Myanmar following earlier attacks of violence, with strict control over their movements.
