{"id":20409,"date":"2018-10-30T14:23:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T14:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20409"},"modified":"2018-10-30T14:23:47","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T14:23:47","slug":"bangladesh-myanmar-to-start-returning-rohingya-in-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20409","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh, Myanmar to start returning Rohingya in November"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bangladesh and Myanmar<\/a> agreed on Tuesday to start returning Rohingya refugees in November, less than a week after UN investigators warned that a genocide against the Muslim minority was still ongoing.<\/p>\n

More than 720,000 Rohingya<\/a>\u00a0fled a brutal military crackdown in August last year, taking shelter in crowded camps in Bangladesh and bringing with them harrowing tales of rape, murder and arson blamed on the Myanmar army.<\/p>\n

Investigators have said senior Myanmar military officials should be prosecuted for genocide in Rakhine state, but the country has rejected these calls, insisting it was defending itself against armed fighters.<\/p>\n

Myanmar and Bangladesh<\/a> announced a large-scale repatriation plan in November 2017. But the process hit bureaucratic hurdles almost immediately and it failed to take off, as both sides blamed the other for the delay.<\/p>\n

Rights groups have warned that returning the Rohingya to Myanmar would condemn them to further reprisals.<\/p>\n

Authorities in Buddhist-majority Myanmar say more than 100 displaced Rohingya have returned in recent months, but Bangladesh insists that the official process has not commenced.<\/p>\n

“We are looking forward to starting the repatriation by mid-November,” Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque said after talks in Dhaka between officials from both countries.<\/p>\n

“It is the first phase,” Haque said.<\/p>\n

Myanmar’s permanent secretary of foreign affairs Myint Thu, who attended the talks, said both sides agreed to a “very concrete” plan to start the process next month.<\/p>\n

“We have shown our political will, flexibility and accommodation in order to commence the repatriation at the earliest possible date,” Thu told reporters.<\/p>\n

Guaranteed rights<\/h2>\n

Myanmar’s government has trumpeted every occasion where a Rohingya family has returned, though rights groups have questioned whether the refugees did so voluntarily.<\/p>\n

Many fear returning to Myanmar without guaranteed rights such as citizenship, access to healthcare and freedom of movement – rights that were denied to them long before last year’s crackdown.<\/p>\n

The pledge to begin returning the Rohingya comes just days after UN investigators warned of an “ongoing genocide” against the Muslim minority in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, said that beyond mass killings, the conflict included the ostracisation of the population, prevention of births, and widespread displacement in camps.<\/p>\n

The UN says the return of the Rohingya must be voluntary, and conducted in dignity and security.<\/p>\n

It conducted a survey of conditions in northern Rakhine state last month and reported “mistrust, fear of neighbouring communities and a sense of insecurity” prevalent in many areas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Tuesday to start returning Rohingya refugees in November, less than a week after UN investigators warned that a genocide against the Muslim minority was still ongoing. More than 720,000 Rohingya\u00a0fled a brutal military crackdown in August last year, taking shelter in crowded camps in Bangladesh and bringing with them harrowing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}