Burma and Bangladesh agree to return hundreds of thousands of Rohingya within two years, despite warnings over camps

Rohingya children at Balukhai refugee camp about 30 miles from Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh
Rohingya children at Balukhai refugee camp about 30 miles from Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Credit: AP

Burma and Bangladesh agreed on Tuesday to complete the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees within two years, despite international fears that they will be held in grim internment camps that may result in long term ghettos and a “powder keg” of radicalisation.

More than 650,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims have been sheltering in neighbouring Bangladesh since the Burmese military began a bloody crackdown in Burma’s northern Rakhine state in August, a campaign so brutal that it has been described by the United Nations as “ethnic cleansing.”

Despite reports of mass rape, murder and the torching of villages, Burma (also known as Myanmar) and Bangladesh agreed in principle late last year to return the refugees as quickly as possible, but are still thrashing out the details.

Burmese social welfare and resettlement minister, Win Myat Aye, claimed on Monday that Burma would be ready to accept the first returnees on January 23 and “we are sure that this will be done on time.” Dhaka, however, has not confirmed the starting date for repatriation.  

State-run Burmese media reported that construction was progressing rapidly at the 124-acre Hla Po Khaung camp, which will eventually host 30,000 in 625 buildings.

Rohingya refugee children at Palong Khali camp near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh
Rohingya refugee children at Palong Khali camp near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh Credit: Reuters

The UN refugee agency is not currently involved in the process but has said it is willing to play a “constructive role” if allowed.

Burma’s recent history of indefinite detention of the Rohingya minority had made the UN and international NGOs wary of involvement with the impending repatriation, said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

“The Myanmar government’s priority is all about keeping control of returnees pending nationality verification, and that means holding them while they sort people out – which is unlikely to be a speedy process,” he said.

“There’s no faith among the Rohingya that they will be protected or treated fairly during that process, and they fear being ghettoized in an IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camp.”

Refugees feared the same fate of some 100,000 Rohingya who were displaced by ethnic unrest in 2012, only to be confined in destitute camps encircling Rakhine’s state capital Sittwe, Mr Robertson explained.

Several years later they reportedly suffer chronic malnutrition, receive minimal medical care and are forbidden to travel freely outside the camps.

Amnesty International’s Myanmar researcher Laura Haigh said the plans to return refugees to temporary camps raised serious alarm bells.

“For the last five years tens of thousands of Rohingya have been confined to squalid displacement camps which they are not allowed to leave,” she said.

“Rakhine State is an apartheid state, and until this appalling system is dismantled, there can be no safe or dignified returns.”

On Monday the House of Commons International Development Committee issued a new report raising “grave concern” about the plight of returning refugees, while decrying the “huge human tragedy” that had been created by Burma’s actions.

“There is also the chilling prospect of yet another long-term, politically intractable, cross-border displacement where the prospects of it becoming a powder keg of radicalisation seem very real,” the report warned.

MPs cautioned that the repatriation plans for the displaced were “well apace” without guarantees that the first batch of returnees were voluntary or how they would be protected.

They said there was no evidence of consultation of the community, whose local leadership structures had been massively disrupted.

The Rohingya had “paid a heavy price for the lack of consensus amongst the international community on how and when to decide to act effectively. We cannot fail them again,” said Stephen Twigg, Labour MP and committee chair.

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