Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have insisted that they would not return to Myanmar to “be confined in camps” after making their first return visit.
In the Bangladeshi border district of Cox’s Bazar, nearly a million Muslims from the Rohingya ethnic group reside in filthy camps.
The majority of them have been there ever since they fled a military-led crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar in 2017 and haven’t been home till now, despite Bangladeshi officials have visited Myanmar on many occasions in an effort to bring the refugees home.
On Friday, twenty Rohingya Muslim refugees and seven representatives from Bangladesh visited Maungdaw Township and adjacent villages in Rakhine State to observe the relocation plans.
Beginning in 2017, renewed violence, including reported rape, murder, and arson, triggered an exodus of Rohingya, as Myanmar’s security forces claimed they were carrying out a campaign to reinstate stability in the country’s western region.
The United Nations has said that those forces showed “genocidal intent,” and international pressure on the country’s elected leaders to end the repression continues to rise.
