{"id":2337,"date":"2018-11-02T03:38:04","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T03:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/?p=2337"},"modified":"2018-11-02T03:38:04","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T03:38:04","slug":"bangladesh-myanmar-to-start-returning-rohingya-in-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/2018\/11\/02\/bangladesh-myanmar-to-start-returning-rohingya-in-november\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh, Myanmar to start returning Rohingya in November"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bangladesh and\u00a0Myanmar<\/a>\u00a0agreed 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\u00a0Rohingya<\/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\u00a0Bangladesh<\/a>\u00a0announced 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

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“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

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Bangladesh and\u00a0Myanmar\u00a0agreed 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\u00a0Rohingya\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… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42],"class_list":["post-2337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post","tag-aljazeera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2338,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2337\/revisions\/2338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}