By Matthew Smith
Editor's note: Matthew Smith is co-founder
and Chief Executive Officer at Fortify Rights. Follow him on Twitter
@matthewfsmith.The opinions expressed here are solely his.
Bangkok (CNN): The governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh
still say they plan to start sending thousands of Rohingya refugees back to
their native Rakhine State in western Myanmar any day now, just months after
Myanmar soldiers led a deadly crackdown against them.
Both governments claim they won't force Rohingya to
return, but refugees
aren't exactly lining up to participate, either—so what's the point?
https://cnn.com/2018/01/23/asia/bangladesh-rohingya-repatriation-fears-intl/index.html
Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi first began
speaking about repatriation back in September 2017.
At the time, plumes of smoke from bone-strewn ash heaps
were still rising from whole Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine State. The
Myanmar Army was leading a genocidal campaign against Rohingya civilians, largely in
response to Rohingya militant attacks that killed several police. http://www.fortifyrights.org/downloads/THEY_TRIED_TO_KILL_US_ALL_Atrocity_Crimes_against_Rohingya_Muslims_Nov_2017.pdf
My colleagues and I documented Myanmar Army-led massacres
of civilians in all three townships of northern Rakhine State in August and
September 2017. Infants were thrown into fires. Soldiers systematically raped and gang raped
Rohingya women and girls in homes, schools, fields, and forests across
disparate locations and within the same time-frame. Men and boys were
arbitrarily detained en masse. Many disappeared. State security forces and
armed mobs razed hundreds of Rohingya villages, forcing up to 688,000 into Bangladesh.
Rohingya
say they prefer death to going home https://cnn.com/2018/01/23/asia/bangladesh-rohingya-repatriation-fears-intl/index.html
Conditions not ripe for return
On January 10, the Myanmar Army acknowledged some of its
soldiers captured and summarily executed 10 Rohingya civilians and buried them in a
mass grave, however, the police continue to detain Reuters journalists Wa Lone
and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were said to be investigating the incident and other
atrocities against Rohingya. https://cnn.com/2018/01/11/asia/myanmar-mass-grave-intl/index.html
To this day, not a single soldier or commander has been
held accountable for the rapes, killings and arson attacks, and State Counselor
Suu Kyi continues to stubbornly
deny full access to United Nations fact finders, journalists, and
human rights monitors. http://cnn.com/2017/12/20/asia/myanmar-grave-journalists-intl/index.html
Related
article: 'We
will not go': Rohingya fear repatriation to Myanmar http://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/23/asia/bangladesh-rohingya-repatriation-fears-intl/index.html
The government of Myanmar still denies aid agencies
unfettered access to Rakhine State, despite desperate needs on the ground. The
World Food Program is now reporting emergency-level child malnutrition and food
shortages.
These are not conditions ripe for return.
Meanwhile, the specter of more mass atrocities hangs over
the Rohingya in Bangladesh like a dark and foreboding cloud. Unthinkable as it
may be, the worst may have yet to come.
"You can throw us into the sea, but please don't
send us back," a Rohingya refugee woman from Buthidaung Township told my
colleagues and me in November. "We will not go back to Myanmar."
Internment camps
Their fear is understandable. On September 19, when Suu
Kyi first floated the idea of repatriating the refugees during her first and
only major speech on the situation, she declared that military "clearance
operations" stopped on September 5. To be fair, Suu Kyi was
likely told as much, but the claim wasn't remotely true, and Rohingya
communities knew that better than anyone. http://cnn.com/2017/09/19/asia/myanmar-aung-san-suu-kyi-speech-facts/index.html
Bangladesh authorities knew as well. In November, I was
with colleagues in an open-air, second-floor office at the district
headquarters of the Border Guards Bangladesh in Teknaf, meeting with a senior
military official.
Rohingya
crisis: 'It's not genocide,' say Myanmar's hardline monks http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/25/asia/myanmar-buddhist-nationalism-mabatha/index.html
We spoke for more than an hour before he handed us an
internal intelligence report detailing daily Myanmar military activity near the
shared border, including dates, times, and geographic coordinates of automatic
weapon fire on the Myanmar side. This was a full two months after Suu Kyi
claimed such operations had ceased.
"There were confirmed gunfire shots in the last two
weeks," the official told us, confirming that the gunfire was from Myanmar
state security forces. "Every night we were hearing the firing, seeing
villages burning, and we were getting dead bodies also."
Apart from fears of lethal violence, many Rohingya
understandably fear they'd be repatriated to internment camps.
The Government of Myanmar continues to confine more than 120,000 Rohingya to
more than 35 squalid camps in eight townships of Rakhine State—all displaced
during rounds of violence in 2012. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Rakhine_Snapshot_IDPS_A4_May17.pdf
Complicated response
There's also the possibility of another attack against
Myanmar forces by Rohingya militants—the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army— which could
easily prompt another military crackdown on civilians. http://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/10/asia/myanmar-rohingya-militants-arsa-intl/index.html
The Bangladesh authorities' response to the crisis has
been complicated.
Since August, we've witnessed continuous acts of humanity
by Bangladesh border guards, including officials providing much-needed
protection for fleeing Rohingya. Their concern was evident and genuine, even
heartwarming. But that could change in an instant.
Related
article: Accounts of rape, burning children and murder: How a Rohingya massacre
unfolded at Tula Toli http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/12/asia/myanmar-rohingya-tula-toli-massacre-testimony/index.html
Bangladesh's primary interest now is to rid itself of the
refugee population, and it has a history of refoulement and forcing Rohingya
refugees to return to Myanmar without proper guarantees of safety.
Back in the early 1990s, following similar waves of
attacks by Myanmar security forces against Rohingya, Bangladesh withheld food aid and in
some cases physically forced refugees over the border and at gunpoint. http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/YPP-94.htm
Return with dignity
We're not quite there yet, but it's not unthinkable,
especially if the international community stays silent—or worse, feigns support
for the plan.
Donor governments should use this moment to demand that
the Myanmar authorities create conditions so that Rohingya can return safely,
voluntarily, and with dignity.
The government should dismantle existing internment
camps, abolish the severe restrictions against Rohingya, including longstanding
restrictions on freedom of movement, and restore Rohingya access to full
citizenship.
Myanmar is using the discourse of repatriation to try to
convince the world it's doing the right thing and to shift attention away from
the military's heinous crimes of recent months. Governments shouldn't fall for
it.
They should instead use all political means possible to
hold the perpetrators accountable for their crimes. It's precisely what the
generals fear.
The opinions expressed here are solely those
of the author.