Arakan News Agency
Myanmar has said it plans to repatriate seven hundred thousand Rohingya minority who have fled to Bangladesh to escape a crackdown and murder by the authorities since August.
Myanmar’s permanent secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Myint Thu said Myanmar would transfer the Muslim Rohingya to 11 new villages, not to the villages from which they fled.
He pointed out that 374 Rohingya refugees had been confirmed to be repatriated, saying that they would return within weeks “where they would first be transferred to a transit camp and then” to new villages with security close to their original homes.
Myint Thu expressed Myanmar’s readiness to work with UN agencies on refugee repatriation operations, adding that Chancellor Aung San Suu Kyi was evaluating the offer made by the High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The United Nations and human rights groups called for the return of the Rohingya to be voluntary and safe, and to be made to their original place of residence, not to artificial new villages or camps.
The United Nations said in a statement on Wednesday that it had presented a concept note on how to set the conditions for a safe, dignified and voluntary return of Rohingya refugees.
Myanmar’s army has been waging a campaign against the Muslim minority of Rohingya in the northern state of Arakan since August.
Burn and rape
Human rights reports, press reports and field testimonies confirm that the Myanmar army has carried out widespread killings, burning and rape in Rohingya villages.
Earlier, the United Nations Special Adviser on Genocide, Adama Dieng, said that crimes amounting to genocide were committed against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar and that they bore the hallmarks of the Myanmar Government and the international community.
“Rohingya Muslims have been killed, tortured, raped, burnt alive and insulted for one reason only: their ethnic affiliation,” the UN official said in a statement.
He added that the information he had seen indicated that the perpetrators intended to purge Northern Arakan of Rohingya and called on the UN Security Council “to examine various accounting options.”
