The US wants Myanmar to repatriate
hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in their
own villages following their exodus from the
country's violence-wracked Rakhine state for
Bangladesh, a senior State Department
official said Saturday in Dhaka.
Simon Henshaw, acting US assistant
secretary of state who visited refugee
camps in southeast Bangladesh, said
Myanmar should also punish those who
committed atrocities in Rakhine.
More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled to
Bangladesh since late August carrying
accounts of murder, rape and arson at the
hands of Myanmar's powerful army during a
military crackdown dubbed as "ethnic
cleansing" by the UN.
They have taken refuge in squalid camps in
southeast Bangladesh, joining the more than
200,000 Rohingyas who had set up homes
there after escaping earlier bouts of
violence.
"First of all, it is (Myanmar's) responsibility
to return security and stability to Rakhine
state. Secondly, it's their responsibility to
investigate reports of atrocities and bring
those who committed them to
accountability," Henshaw told reporters in
Dhaka.
"Part of bringing people back to Rakhine
state requires these people be allowed to
return to their land.... And for those whose
villages are burnt, quick efforts need to be
made to restore their homes and their
villages," he said.
After weeks of intense global pressure,
Myanmar agreed to take back Rohingya who
meet "verification" standards. But the
criteria remain vague, raising fears it will be
used to restrict the number of returnees.
Experts say repatriation will also be
complicated by the scale of destruction in
Rakhine, where hundreds of Rohingya
villages have been reduced to ash.
Relief workers say some refugees have
expressed a reluctance to return if it would
mean living in camp-like settlements or
being barred from occupying the land they
had before.
US lawmakers on Friday proposed sanctions
against Myanmar's military, in some of the
strongest efforts yet by Washington to
pressure the Southeast Asian nation to end
abusive treatment of the Muslim minority.
Myanmar authorities say the security
crackdown was in response to attacks by
Rohingya militants on police posts in late
August.
For decades, the Rohingya have faced
discrimination in Buddhist-majority
Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship
and denigrated as illegal "Bengali"
immigrants.