SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Myanmar is willing to take back all
700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled to Bangladesh if they volunteer
to return, the country’s National Security Adviser Thaung Tun said on Saturday.
He was speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a regional
security conference in Singapore, where he was asked if the situation in
Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where most Rohingya live, could trigger use of the
Responsibility to Protect framework of the United Nations.
The so-called R2P framework was adopted at the 2005 U.N.
World Summit in which nations agreed to protect their own populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and accepted
a collective responsibility to encourage and help each other uphold this
commitment.
“If you can send back 700,000 on a voluntary basis, we are
willing to receive them,” Thaung Tun said. “Can this be called ethnic
cleansing?
“There is no war going on, so it’s not war crimes. Crimes
against humanity, that could be a consideration, but we need clear evidence.
These serious charges should be proved and they should not be bandied about
lightly.”
Since August 2017, about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have
fled a military crackdown in mainly Buddhist Myanmar, many reporting killings,
rape and arson on a large scale, U.N. and other aid organizations have said.
The United Nations and aid agencies have described the
crackdown on the Rohingya as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, an
accusation Myanmar rejects.
Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed in January to complete the
voluntary repatriation of the refugees within two years.
Myanmar signed an agreement with the United Nations on
Thursday aimed at eventually allowing the Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh to
return safely and by choice.
It also said it would set up an independent commission to
investigate “the violation of human rights and related issues” in Rakhine State
following the army operation there in response to attacks by Rohingya
insurgents on security posts.
Thaung Tun said that the narrative of what happened in
Rakhine was “incomplete and misleading”.
“Myanmar does not deny that what is unfolding in northern
Rakhine is a humanitarian crisis,” he said. “There is no denying that the
Muslim community in Rakhine has suffered. The Buddhist Rakhine, Hindu and other
ethnic minorities have suffered no less.”
He said that while the military had the right to defend
the country, if investigations showed they had acted illegally, action would be
taken.