Myanmar\u2019s government said it repatriated on Saturday the first family of Rohingya out of some 700,000 refugees who fled to Bangladesh to escape a brutal military campaign, despite UN warnings that a safe return is not yet possible.<\/p>\n
The stateless Muslim minority has been massing in squalid Bangladesh camps since the Myanmar army launched a ruthless crackdown on the community in northern Rakhine state last August.<\/p>\n
The UN says the campaign amounts to ethnic cleansing, but Myanmar has denied the charge, saying its troops targeted Rohingya militants.<\/p>\n
Bangladesh and Myanmar vowed to begin repatriation in January but the plan has been repeatedly delayed as both sides blame the other for a lack of preparation.<\/p>\n
According to a Myanmar government statement posted late Saturday, one family of Rohingya refugees became the first to return earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe five members of a family… came back to Taungpyoletwei town repatriation camp in Rakhine state this morning,\u201d said a statement posted on the official Facebook page of the government\u2019s Information Committee.<\/p>\n
The post described the family as \u201cMuslim\u201d, in line with a government policy not to use the word \u201cRohingya\u201d, which authorities do not recognise as an ethnicity.<\/p>\n
Authorities determined \u201cwhether they were once living here\u201d and provided the family with National Verification Cards, a form of ID that falls short of citizenship and has been rejected by Rohingya leaders who want full rights.<\/p>\n
Photos posted alongside the statement showed one man, two women, a young girl and a boy receiving the ID cards and getting health checks.<\/p>\n
It said that the family had been sent to stay \u201ctemporarily\u201d with relatives in Maungdaw town.<\/p>\n
The post did not mention any plans for further returnees in the near future.<\/p>\n
The move comes despite warnings from the UN and other rights groups that a mass repatriation of Rohingya would be premature, as Myanmar has yet to address the systematic legal discrimination and persecution the minority has faced for decades.<\/p>\n
The Rohingya are reviled by many in the Buddhist-majority country, where they are branded as illegal \u201cBengali\u201d immigrants from Bangladesh, despite their long roots in Rakhine state.<\/p>\n
They have been systematically stripped of their citizenship in recent decades and forced to live in apartheid-like conditions with severely restricted access to health care, education and other basic services.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, the conditions are not conducive to a voluntary, dignified and sustainable return,\u201d Ursula Mueller, assistant secretary general for the UN\u2019s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP earlier this month after a visit to Rakhine.<\/p>\n
Myanmar must address \u201ccritical issues of freedom of movement, social cohesion, livelihoods, and access to services\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n
Many Rohingya refugees say they fear returning to a country where they saw their relatives murdered by soldiers and where Buddhist vigilantes drove them from their homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Myanmar\u2019s government said it repatriated on Saturday the first family of Rohingya out of some 700,000 refugees who fled to Bangladesh to escape a brutal military campaign, despite UN warnings that a safe return is not yet possible. The stateless Muslim minority has been massing in squalid Bangladesh camps since the Myanmar army launched a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28127,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28125\/revisions\/28127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}