Biodun.BBC: Myanmar's Rakhine state

Showing posts with label Myanmar's Rakhine state. Show all posts

Friday, August 24, 2018

Analysis: Rohingya crisis a year on: refugees going nowhere as cash crunch looms

24 August 2018 - 09H40 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Wang Yang and Biodun Iginla, France24 News Analysts, COX'S BAZAR (BANGLADESH)

COX'S BAZAR (BANGLADESH) -

With a repatriation plan in tatters and funding evaporating for a million refugees with ever-growing needs, Rohingya Muslims who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh face a grim future one year after the latest eruption of a decades-old conflict.

Raids by Rohingya militants on August 25 last year across Myanmar's Rakhine state spurred an army crackdown which the United Nations has likened to "ethnic cleansing".

Around 700,000 of the Muslim minority fled by foot or boat to Bangladesh, their villages ablaze behind them, in an exodus unprecedented in speed and scale.

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The crisis has heaped enormous pressure on Bangladesh's impoverished Cox's Bazar district, which already hosted around 300,000 of the stateless group.

Myanmar says it is ready to take those who fled back.

But it refuses to recognise the Rohingya as citizens, falsely labelling them "Bengali" illegal immigrants.

A deal between Myanmar and Bangladesh to start sending them back has also gone nowhere, caught up in bureaucracy and mistrust, with fewer than 200 having been repatriated so far.

Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi this week said it was up to Bangladesh "to decide how quickly" repatriation can be done, while insisting the "terrorist threat" posed by Rohingya militants remains "real and present".

Without safety, citizenship and compensation for homes and land torched or commandeered by the army since they fled, the Rohingya do not want to go back.

- Funding crunch -

But life in the camps, among the most densely populated places on earth, looks set to get harder.

A UN-led appeal for around $1 billion to fund the refugees until March has yielded only a third of that sum.

The slow response has alarmed experts.

"Giving generally peaks in that first year (of a crisis)... then it's much harder to fund," Dr Peter Salama, the emergency response chief of the World Health Organization (WHO), told us at France24.

Without a major cash injection, "remarkable" success in controlling outbreaks of diphtheria, cholera and other diseases could be undone, he said, and provision of non-life saving help -- such as family planning and mental health -- will likely evaporate.

"Bangladesh's government really deserves more regional and international solidarity and support," he added.

The World Bank has pledged $500 million to help with infrastructure, health and education of the Cox's region.

But Bangladesh is tiring of its role as host and insists it will soon relocate around 100,000 Rohingya from Cox's to a remote, flood-prone island.

- 'History of darkness' -

Myanmar has driven out its Rohingya since the late 1970s.

"Our history is of darkness," said Mohammed Kashim, 27, one of thousands of Rohingya refugees born in Bangladesh, but denied citizenship by both countries.

"I have never stepped on Myanmar soil."

And he probably never will.

First he must be "verified" as someone who belongs in Myanmar -- near impossible given he was born outside the country.

Refugees who are verified are required to take a 'NVC' card that does not grant them full citizenship or rights.

Myanmar is unrepentant about last year's crackdown and denies widespread human rights violations, murders, rapes and mass arson of Rohingya villages despite reams of evidence.

But international pressure for accountability is mounting.

Last week Washington hit four Myanmar military commanders and two infantry divisions with punitive financial sanctions over rights abuses and "ethnic cleansing".

The UN Security Council is set to meet next week to discuss the issue, while testimony is being gathered across the camps to press the International Criminal Court (ICC) into launching proceedings against Mynamar.

"There is finally a recognition (in Myanmar) that they cannot merely outlast the opprobrium," Aaron Connelly from the Lowy Institute think tank told us at France24.

But Myanmar is shielded at the UN by ally China, a permanent member of the Security Council. Meanwhile state media reported that the Myanmar military's Commander-in-Chief was in Russia -- another permanent member -- on the eve of the anniversary of a crackdown he ordered.

- Security high in Rakhine -

Myanmar has remade northern Rakhine state without the Rohingya, redistributing land and building new security posts.

It has built massive "transit" camps -- some with room for 30,000 -- for any returnees.

Rohingya refugees fear without citizenship those camps will become permanent, like the ones holding 129,000 Rohingya since 2012.

"We are citizens by birth," said Nay Lin Aung, 35, among hundreds of Rohingya living on a patch of no-man's land between the two countries.

"We won't go back as they (Myanmar) are not calling us with a sincere mind."

Inside Rakhine fear, tension and hatred are razor sharp.

"Both communities (of remaining Rohinya and eEthnic Rakhine Buddhists) have their worries now... so the government has reinforced security," ahead of the anniversary said Ye Htoo, deputy administrator of Maungdaw district on a government-steered trip to Rakhine this week.

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Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Rohingya crisis: Bangladesh and Myanmar agree repatriation timeframe

Rohingya refugees line up for a food supply distribution at the Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh 12 December 2017. — Image captionHundreds of thousands of Rohingya are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh

by Wang Yang and Biodun Iginla, BBC News, Dhaka/Yangon

Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed a timeframe for repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled crackdowns from the military.

Myanmar has agreed to accept 1,500 Rohingya each week, Bangladesh says, adding that it aims to return all of them to Myanmar within two years.

More than 740,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh amid violence in Rakhine state in 2016 and 2017.

Aid agencies have raised concerns about forcibly repatriating them.

Bangladesh says it aims to repatriate families together, as well as orphans and "children born out of unwarranted incidence" - meaning children conceived as a result of rape.

However, displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh have expressed concerns about returning to Myanmar.

Sirajul Mostofa, a community leader in a camp in Cox's Bazaar, told the BBC: "We are still not clear about what agreement was signed.

"Our first priority is, they have to grant us citizenship as Rohingyas. Secondly, they have to give back our lands. Thirdly, our security must be ensured internationally. Otherwise, this is not good for us."

Bangladeshi foreign secretary Shahidul Haque told BBC Bangla that the government had wanted to repatriate the Rohingya more quickly.

"We asked them to take back 15,000 every week. But they said they will take back 300 people every day, so that makes 1,500 every week.

"So we compromised that we will start by sending 300 people each day, but there will be a review in three months' time and the number will be increased."

'Mistrust and fear'

Jonathan Head, BBC Southeast Asia correspondent

At 1,500 refugees a week it would take almost 10 years to bring back all 740,000 who have left since October 2016. Bangladesh hopes that flow can be increased. But as matters stand it is difficult to see how.

Both countries have agreed the repatriation will be voluntary. And most refugees say they will only return if their safety can be assured, their homes rebuilt, and if they are no longer subjected to official discrimination. None of these conditions is in place.

Myanmar has started rebuilding, but mostly for non-Muslims. It is preparing two transit camps, the first able to accommodate 30,000 people. Beyond that not much has changed.

More than 350 villages, nearly all of them Rohingya, have been burned down, some recently. The military, which is accused of terrible human rights abuses, still runs northern Rakhine state. It has denied the abuses, denied access to independent investigators, and strictly limits access for aid agencies.

There is talk of closing the camps in which 130,000 Rohingyas are still confined, but not yet of ending restrictions on Rohingya movements. And nothing is yet happening to reduce the mistrust and fear of Rohingyas felt by the non-Muslim population, some of whom have vowed to fight against any large-scale refugee return.

Myanmar's foreign secretary U Myint Thu told BBC Burmese: "The repatriation process will commence on 23 January."

He said three more transit camps were "under construction", and there were plans to "build new villages".

A spokesperson from the UN High Commission for Refugees urged Myanmar to address the underlying causes of the crisis and said that refugees should only return when they feel it is safe for them to go back.

Andrej Mahecic said there were major challenges, including ensuring the Rohingya were "told about the situation in their areas of origin" and "consulted on their wishes, that their safety is ensured".

Media captionRohingya Muslims displaced from Tula Toli village in Rakhine State gave disturbing accounts to BBC Newsnight

The agreement covers Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh following attacks by a Rohingya militant group on police posts in October 2016 and August 2017.

Those attacks triggered a military crackdown that led to widespread allegations of killings, rape and torture of Rohingya.

The agreement does not cover Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh prior to October 2016, under previous crackdowns and bouts of communal violence.

When the initial repatriation deal was signed in November, Amnesty International said it doubted there could be safe or dignified returns "while a system of apartheid remains" and added that it "hoped those who do not want to go home are not forced to do so".

The Rohingya are a stateless minority in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

The crisis has been described as ethnic cleansing by the UN and the US.

Despite widespread accusations of human rights violations, Myanmar has consistently denied persecuting its Rohingya minority.