Myanmar has said it is willing to take back fewer than 400 Rohingya refugees of the 8,000 who have said they would voluntarily return from Bangladesh.

U Myint Thu, Myanmar’s permanent secretary for foreign affairs, said that of the list of thousands of returnees submitted by the Bangladesh government, they had deemed only 374 eligible for repatriation.

Myanmar blamed Bangladesh for the slow process, accusing its neighbour of submitting missing or “incomplete” information for the majority of the refugees, and accused three on the list of being terrorists.

“These 374 will be the first batch of the repatriation,” said Myint Thu at a press conference in the capital Naypidaw. He did not give a timeline for the return, but simply said: “They can come back when it’s convenient for them.”

'I fear Myanmar, I don't want to go home': Rohingya in Bangladesh – in pictures Read more

This move towards repatriation will barely make a dent in the 700,000 Muslim Rohingya refugees currently living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing a violent and targeted campaign by the Burmese military in Rakhine state which began in August 2017 and destroyed their homes and left thousands dead.

Even if Myanmar finally allows a process of repatriation to begin, after two stalled efforts in December and January, there are still concerns for the safety of the Rohingya and the conditions they will be returned to. Satellite imagery in a report by Amnesty International on Monday showed how most Rohinga villages have been bulldozed, with large concrete structures and military bases being built in their place.

The Myanmar government said the 374 repatriated refugees would be placed in the temporary housing camps they have built – which Human Rights Watch described as “open air prisons” – for no longer than a month and would then be allowed to return to either their original villages, or close by.

It is unclear whether the 8,000 who have said they will voluntarily return are Rohingya who fled the most recent campaign of ethnic cleansing in 2017, or those who came to Bangladesh during earlier rounds of violence in 2012 and 2016.

Abul Kalam, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and rehabilitation commissioner, said despite the small number Myanmar had accepted, “we are still expecting them to take back all of the Rakhine population that are in Bangladesh.”

Kalam said he had not received confirmation from the Burmese government over the latest development, but said that in the earlier meetings between Bangladesh and Myanmar, the proposed figure that Myanmar would accept was 300 Rohingya refugees every day.

UN officials point finger at Myanmar for 'crimes under international law' Read more

“There are still safety issues and we are not exactly sure where these people will be taken to,” he said, of the 374 who have been approved for return to Myanmar. “The understanding between the two parties was that checks would be made for their safety before any people went back.”

The Myanmar government also used the press conference on Wednesday to reiterate their denial that genocide and ethnic cleansing had occurred in Rakhine, following forthright condemnation by UN figures on Tuesday that genocide and “crimes under international law” had been committed in Rakhine.

Investigators described to the human rights council a campaign of violence that included brutal gang rapes, indiscriminate shooting, burning elderly and disabled people alive in their homes, sexual violence against women and the killing of babies and children.

But U Aung Hla Tun, deputy minister of information, said hundreds of thousands of Rohingya had actually been enticed to leave by the prospect of a “better livelihood at the camps in Bangladesh”.

Aung Tun Thet, who has been appointed by Myanmar to oversee the rehabilitation in Rakhine added: “There is no such thing in our country, in our society, as ethnic cleansing, and no genocide.”</s>NAYPYITAW, Myanmar — Senior officials in Myanmar announced Wednesday that they have begun talks with U.N. agencies to see how they could assist with the repatriation of Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh to escape violence against them.

Foreign Ministry Permanent Secretary Myint Thu said the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.N. Development Program responded last week with a proposal and concept paper to the government's invitation for U.N. involvement, which the government is now studying.

"We considered that the time is now appropriate to invite UNHCR and UNDP to be involved in the repatriation and resettlement process, as well as in carrying out activities supporting the livelihoods and development for all communities in Rakhine state," Myint Thu said.

Human rights experts believe safety cannot yet be guaranteed for about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled the western state of Rakhine to Bangladesh after security forces carried out brutal crackdowns in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents last August.

Antagonism between Rakhine's Buddhist community and Rohingya Muslims led to communal violence in 2012, forcing at least 140,000 Rohingya from their homes into squalid camps for internally displaced people. Most Rohingya are treated as stateless persons with limited rights, and the insurgents drew support from the discontented as prejudice against their community grew in overwhelming Buddhist Myanmar.

Stanislav Saling, a U.N. spokesman in Myanmar, confirmed that in response to Myanmar's initiative, the U.N. agencies submitted a note proposing how they could help create conditions "for the safe, dignified and voluntary return for refugees, in line with international principles."

Neither the U.N. nor the government made public details of the proposal.

The international community has accused Myanmar's military of atrocities against the Rohingya that could amount to ethnic cleansing, but the government and military deny any organized human rights violations.

Myanmar's civilian government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has pledged to start the gradual repatriation of the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.

Myanmar's government says 374 refugees out of more than 8,000 whom Bangladesh has verified as qualified to return are free to return at their convenience.

"We have handed the list of 374 people to the Bangladesh Embassy so that they can immediately start their repatriation," Myint Thu said. "These 374 people can be the first repatriation batch."</s>Myanmar plans to repatriate some 700,000 Rohingya Muslim minority who fled to Bangladesh to escape a brutal army crackdown to 11 "new villages," Foreign Affairs Ministry Permanent Secretary Myint Thu told DPA yesterday.

Myint Thu said that 374 Rohingya refugees had been verified for repatriations and would return "within weeks," first to a transit camp and then a "new village with security" close to their original homes. Myanmar and Bangladesh were supposed to start repatriation of Rohingya refugees in late January but many are reluctant to return to a place without guarantees of basic rights and safety. Rights groups and the U.N. have said Rohingya returns should be voluntary, safe and to their place of origin, not to fabricated villages or camps.

Myint Thu said Myanmar was ready to work with U.N. agencies on repatriations and that a proposal by the UNHCR and UNDP was being assessed by the office of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi. The Rohingya trace their presence in Rakhine back centuries. But most people in majority-Buddhist Myanmar consider them to be unwanted Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. The army refers to the Rohingya as "Bengalis," and most lack citizenship.

The stateless Rohingya have been the target of communal violence and vicious anti-Muslim sentiment in mainly Buddhist Myanmar for years. Myanmar has denied citizenship to Rohingya since 1982 and excludes them from the 135 ethnic groups it officially recognizes, which effectively renders them stateless. An estimated 700,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh since an army crackdown was launched in Rakhine in August. Myanmar blames Rohingya militants for an Aug. 25 strike on security posts in Rakhine state that triggered a fierce army crackdown. The U.N. and the U.S. have said the retaliatory response by Myanmar security forces amounted to "ethnic cleansing."</s>Myanmar has only been able to verify 374 Rohingya Muslim refugees for possible repatriation from Bangladesh, officials said on Wednesday, blaming their neighbour for not providing the correct information about the refugees.

YANGON: Myanmar has only been able to verify 374 Rohingya Muslim refugees for possible repatriation from Bangladesh, officials said on Wednesday, blaming their neighbour for not providing the correct information about the refugees.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar after militant attacks on Aug. 25 sparked a crackdown led by security forces in the western Rakhine state that the United Nations and United States have said constituted ethnic cleansing.

The administration of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has sought to counter the allegations by forging ahead with development in Rakhine and by readying reception centres and a camp for returnees.

The two countries reached a deal in November to begin repatriation within two months, but repatriation has not begun, with stateless Rohingya, who face restrictions on their movements in Myanmar, still crossing the border.

Myint Thu, permanent secretary at Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said officials had checked documents handed over by Bangladesh in February relating to 8,032 refugees.

"Out of 8,032, we verified 374. These 374 will be the first batch of the repatriation," Myint Thu said at a news conference in the capital, Naypyitaw.

"They can come back when it's convenient for them."

It was unclear whether the 374 people had agreed to return to Myanmar.

Myanmar was unable to confirm whether the rest of the refugees had previously lived in the country, he said, because some documents did not include fingerprints and individual photographs.

The documents were "not in line with our agreement", police Brigadier-General Win Tun said at the same news conference.

Myanmar had found three "terrorists" among the people Bangladesh was proposing for repatriation, Win Tun added.

Bangladesh officials have expressed doubts about Myanmar's willingness to take back Rohingya refugees.

Abul Kalam, Bangladesh's Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner, said he could not comment in detail because he had not yet received Myanmar's response. But he questioned how more than 300 people could have been verified if the documents were in the wrong format.

At the Naypyitaw news conference, Myanmar officials sought to counter accusations heard at the U.N. Human Rights Council this week.

The head of an U.N. fact-finding mission denied visas by Myanmar and a special envoy on human rights in Myanmar who has been blocked from visiting the country, both spoke in Geneva on Monday. Yanghee Lee, the envoy, said atrocities against the Rohingya in Myanmar "bear the hallmarks of genocide".

"We have a clear conscience," said Aung Tun Thet, coordinator of a public-private partnership set up by Suu Kyi to rehabilitate Rakhine.

"There is no such thing in our country, in our society, as ethnic cleansing, and no genocide."</s>NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar officials say the time is right to have U.N. agencies become involved in the repatriation of Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh to escape violence against them.

Foreign Ministry Permanent Secretary Myint Thu said Wednesday that the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.N. Development Program responded last week to the government’s invitation with a proposal and concept paper, which are now being studied. A U.N. spokesman in Myanmar confirmed sending a note proposing how the agencies could help create conditions for the safe, dignified and voluntary return of the refugees.

Human rights experts believe safety cannot yet be guaranteed for about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh after security forces carried out brutal crackdowns in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents last August.</s>Myanmar plans to repatriate 700,000 Muslim minority Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh to escape brutal army crackdown to 11 “new villages,’’ Permanent Secretary, Foreign Affairs Ministry, Myint Thu, said on Thursday.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh were violently driven from their villages in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine by national security forces in a campaign of killings, rape and arson that begun in August 2017.

Myanmar said legitimate security operations were carried out to restore law and order following deadly Rohingya militant attacks on Aug. 25.

On Monday, Amnesty International said hundreds of Rohingya villages in Rakhine were being bulldozed and developed with military infrastructure.

Thu said 374 Rohingya refugees had been verified for repatriation and would return “within weeks,” first to a transit camp and then a “new village with security” close to their original homes.

Rights groups and the UN have said Rohingya returns should be voluntary, safe and to their place of origin – not to fabricated villages or camps.

Thu said Myanmar was ready to work with UN agencies on repatriations and that a proposal by UNHCR and UNDP was being assessed by the office of State Counselor Aung-San Suu-Kyi.

The UN had delivered “a concept note to outline how conditions for the safe, dignified and voluntary return of refugees … could be created with support from these agencies,” a UN statement on Wednesday said.

At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, Myanmar refuted UN claims that government actions in Rakhine “bear the hallmarks of genocide.”</s>Mr. Dieng also accused the international community of having “buried its head in the sand.”

But the Myanmar government maintains that the Rohingya burned down their own villages, and it rejects widespread testimony of executions and sexual violence by the military.

U Aung Hla Tun, Myanmar’s deputy minister of information, said on Wednesday that the Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh was caused, in part, by threats from the Rohingya insurgents who carried out fatal raids on Myanmar security posts on Aug. 25.

“According to the information from the reliable sources on the ground,” Mr. Aung Hla Tun said, “most of these people fled in panic just after the military operations following the terrorist attacks, for fear of being arrested for their involvement or on suspicion.”

Many of the Rohingya “were persuaded to flee” by the prospect of “better livelihood at the camps in Bangladesh,” Mr. Aung Hla Tun said.

The Myanmar government has not sent any investigators to the squalid Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, which now constitute the world’s largest mega-settlement of displaced people. With monsoon rains coming, aid groups worry that large sections of these settlements could wash away.

Myanmar officials have rejected outright fact-finding reports that were submitted on Monday to the United Nations Human Rights Council that documented severe violations of the rights of ethnic minorities in Myanmar, including the Rohingya.

Speaking to the council, Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said the military’s campaign against the Rohingya bore “the hallmarks of genocide” and urged international legal action against “the individuals who gave the orders and carried out violations against individuals and entire ethnic and religious groups.”

On Monday, Amnesty International accused the Myanmar government of destroying the remains of Rohingya villages in a campaign dedicated to “erasing evidence of crimes against humanity.” Using satellite imagery, Amnesty documented how new security bases were being built on land that had once housed Rohingya communities. Separately, rights groups have documented more than 300 Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine that were razed by fire since last August.

The Myanmar government says that any recent bulldozing has been for benign purposes.

“We are clearing the land to make it suitable for rebuilding for the refugees,” Mr. Aung Tun Thet said on Wednesday at a news conference in Naypyidaw, the Myanmar capital.

Both the Bangladesh and Myanmar governments have talked up voluntary repatriations as a solution to one of the world’s most urgent refugee crises. So far, only 8,032 of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya now crowded into the Bangladesh camps have said they are willing to be repatriated, according to a list drawn up by the Bangladeshi authorities last month.

On Wednesday, U Myint Thu, Myanmar’s permanent secretary for foreign affairs, said that Bangladesh’s repatriation list was missing “essential information” needed to verify that those people had indeed fled from Myanmar. Consequently, only 374 of the 8,032 applicants had been verified and approved by his government, he said.

“They can come back anytime at their convenience,” Mr. Myint Thu said, without specifying a timeline.

Multiple deadlines to begin the repatriation process have passed without any movement. Each government has blamed the other for the delay.

Any returnees would be sent first to dismal transit centers. Human Rights Watch has called those internment camps, with their long houses and barbed-wire fences, “open-air prisons.” U Zaw Htay, a Myanmar government spokesman, said on Wednesday that repatriated individuals would spend no more than a month in the camps.

“Then they can move to their original homes, or to the nearest places,” Mr. Zaw Htay said.

But about 120,000 Rohingya who were displaced during violence in 2012 are still confined to internment camps in central Rakhine State. Mr. Zaw Htay said on Wednesday that, more than five years later, the “process of moving them to their original places” had finally begun.

“We are trying our best,” he said.

United Nations officials were not as sanguine. “Under the present conditions, returning to Myanmar will put the Rohingya population at risk of further crimes,” said Mr. Dieng, the genocide prevention expert at the United Nations.

“We must not fail the Rohingya population again,” he said. “They have endured what no human beings should have to endure.”</s>Two reports to the United Nations have found that Myanmar has carried out extreme human rights violations against the Rohingya people, abuses that are most likely crimes under international law.

The U.N. Human Rights Council heard both reports on Monday: one from the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, and another from Yanghee Lee, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar.

The government of Myanmar rejected both reports, saying their claims are unsupported, according to the Associated Press. Investigators have been barred by the government from entering Myanmar, and so have relied on interviews with refugees and others in Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand.

"The body of information and materials we are collecting is concrete and overwhelming," the experts of the Fact-Finding Mission said in their oral report. "It points at human rights violations of the most serious kind, in all likelihood amounting to crimes under international law."

The mission's report was based on over 600 in-depth interviews with victims and witnesses. Investigators also analyzed satellite imagery, photos and video footage.

"Any denial of the seriousness of the situation in Rakhine, the reported human rights violations, and the suffering of the victims, is untenable," they said. "We have hundreds of credible accounts of the most harrowing nature."

The mission found that so-called "clearance operations" by Myanmar security forces had driven nearly 700,000 Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh since August – and that many Rohingya were killed in such operations: "People died from gunshot wounds, often due to indiscriminate shooting at fleeing villagers. Some were burned alive in their homes – often the elderly, disabled and young children. Others were hacked to death."

In her statement, Lee said that actions in the country "bear the hallmarks of genocide."

She interviewed more than 100 refugees in Bangladesh, and they told her terrible things: "Parents told me harrowing accounts of witnessing their young children being thrown into fires. Survivors described the security forces calling families out of their homes, separating men and boys to be executed in front of their families or taken away. I heard testimony of women and girls being raped and then killed, some burned alive in their homes while unconscious or tied up."

Lee said satellite images show that Myanmar is building military bases on sites where Rohingya villages have been bulldozed.

"This casts further doubt on the sincerity of Myanmar regarding repatriating the Rohingya from Bangladesh," she said. "Importantly, it will be impossible for anyone to claim where they are from or describe where they had previously lived if the region's landscape has been so significantly altered. Additionally, there appears to be a policy of forced starvation in place, designed to make life in northern Rakhine unsustainable for Rohingya who remain."

But Myanmar's government rejected the legitimacy of the reports.

"We are not denying rights violations but we are asking for strong, fact-based, and trustworthy evidence on the allegations they are making," Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay told the AP.

Facebook also came under scrutiny for the role its platform played in spreading hate speech, Reuters reports.

"It has ... substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public," Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the fact-finding mission, told reporters. "Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media."

Lee said the platform had "turned into a beast."

"Everything is done through Facebook in Myanmar," she said, according to Reuters. "It was used to convey public messages but we know that the ultra-nationalist Buddhists ... are really inciting a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the Rohingya or other ethnic minorities."</s>The following content is sourced from external partners. We cannot guarantee that it is suitable for the visually or hearing impaired.

This content was published on March 16, 2018 4:46 PM

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, attends a meeting of Latin America and Caribbean for the global pact on refugees, at the Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia, Brazil February 20, 2018. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

GENEVA (Reuters) - A quick agreement to return Rohingya refugees to Myanmar is looking less and less likely, the U.N. refugee chief said on Friday as he launched an almost $1 billion (719.12 million pounds) appeal to support the stateless Muslims in camps in Bangladesh for the rest of 2018.

The United Nations says 671,000 Rohingya fled from Myanmar's Rakhine state after militant attacks in August sparked a crackdown led by security forces, which a U.N. investigator said bore "the hallmarks of genocide".

Filippo Grandi, head of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said the Rohingya must be allowed to return to their homes in Myanmar, but returns could only take place voluntarily and if their rights were guaranteed.

“The odds are growing against a solution, an early solution anyway, but this is not a reason for me as High Commissioner for Refugees to give up on this issue,” he told a news conference.

"We are very mindful of the fact that this situation may take a long time, and therefore we need to plan for this."

Asked how long the Rohingya might stay in their camps in Bangladesh at the minimum, Grandi said: “I wish I knew.”

Last year he had visited another part of Myanmar where displaced people had been stuck in camps for six or seven years. He said the Rohingya could not be subjected to the same fate on a much larger scale.

Myint Thu, permanent secretary at Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Wednesday that a first batch of 374 refugees could be repatriated.

He also said Myanmar now considered it was appropriate to invite UNHCR and the U.N. Development Programme into the repatriation process.

Grandi said he still did not have agreement for UNHCR's involvement, which he said was "crucial, essential and indispensable".

"The discussions with Myanmar have been pretty basic, not very frequent, not very advanced, but they have continued. This is the way it goes in this situation. It’s very difficult,” Grandi said.

The government does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens, and Grandi said their rights needed to be established, including citizenship, freedom of movement and access to services.

But first of all the violence had to stop. Although movements into Bangladesh have decreased massively since the flood late last year, they continue to come in smaller numbers, suggesting the situation has still not stabilised, he said.

He also said that other governments should only invest in development projects in Rakhine if they ensured it supported the presence of Rohingyas and did not perpetuate the situation.</s>FILE - In this Nov. 1, 2017, file photo, Rohingya Muslims carry their young children and belongings after crossing the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh, near Palong Khali, Bangladesh. File picture: AP Photo/Bernat Armangue

Yangon - Myanmar plans to repatriate some 700 000 Muslim Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh to 11 "new villages," a senior official said on Thursday, bringing warnings from activists of further repression of the minority group.

Foreign Affairs Ministry Permanent Secretary Myint Thu told dpa said that a first group of 374 Rohingya refugees had been verified for repatriation and would return "within weeks," first to a transit camp and then a "new village with security" close to their original homes.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have said they were violently driven from their villages in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine by national security forces in a campaign of killings, rape and arson that began in August last year.

Myanmar has said legitimate security operations were carried out to restore law and order following deadly Rohingya militant attacks on August 25.

"This model is totally unacceptable to both the Rohingya and the international community because it will lead to the kind of systematic repression of rights seen in the internally displaced persons camps west of Sittwe [Rakhine State capital], including restrictions on movement, livelihoods, and access to food, medicine and other basic services," he told dpa on Thursday.

Chris Lewa, of the Arakan Project, echoed these concerns: "If refugees do go back [to these new villages] they will be living in an internally displaced persons camp, like other areas of Rakhine State where they are restricted from leaving," she said.

The unanimous stance of Rohingya in Bangladesh camps, she told dpa by phone on Thursday, was that they would not return to Myanmar unless they were guaranteed freedom and equal rights with all Myanmar citizens."

On Monday, Amnesty International said hundreds of Rohingya villages in Rakhine were being bulldozed and developed with military infrastructure.

Rights groups and the UN have said Rohingya returns should be voluntary, safe and to their place of origin - not to fabricated villages or camps.

Myint Thu said Myanmar was ready to work with UN agencies on repatriations and that a proposal by UNHCR and UNDP was being assessed by the office of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi.

The UN had delivered "a concept note to outline how conditions for the safe, dignified and voluntary return of refugees ... could be created with support from these agencies," a UN statement Wednesday said.

At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, Myanmar refuted UN claims that government actions in Rakhine "bear the hallmarks of genocide."
The government of Myanmar agrees to repatriate 374 Rohingya refugees from a list of 8,000 submitted by the government of Bangladesh. Myanmar's authorities blamed their Bangladeshi counterparts for the slow process, citing "incomplete" information for many of the refugees on the list.