Talking about Rohingyas returning is premature
The idea of Rohingya refugees' return to Rakhine is premature and unthinkable until Myanmar's suffocating "apartheid" system is dismantled, Amnesty International said yesterday.
In response to news that the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh have signed an agreement to return close to a million Rohingya refugees currently in Bangladesh, Amnesty International's Director for Refugee and Migrant Rights, Charmain Mohamed, said:“While precise details of this deal have not yet been revealed, talk of returns is clearly premature.”
“There can be no safe or dignified returns of Rohingya to Myanmar while a system of apartheid remains in the country, and thousands are held there in conditions that amount to concentration camps. Returns in the current climate are simply unthinkable,” he said.
“Myanmar and Bangladesh have clear obligations under international law not to return individuals to a situation in which they are at risk of persecution or other serious human rights violations,” Charmain Mohamed added.
On Tuesday, an Amnesty study accused Myanmar of running a years-long "state-sponsored" campaign which restricted virtually all aspects of Rohingya life, confining the Muslim minority to a "ghetto-like" existence in the mainly Buddhist country.
The 100-page report, based on two years of research, says the web of controls meet the legal standard of the "crime against humanity of apartheid".
"Rakhine State is a crime scene. This was the case long before the vicious campaign of military violence of the last three months," said Anna Neistat, Amnesty's senior director for research.
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