Reuters

‘……Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Abul Kalam told Reuters on Thursday that his government had left no stone unturned.

“We made all preparations. Everything was ready: the transit camp, buses to carry them to border, medical facilities, rations for three days for the returnees,” said Kalam. “How they can say we are weak in physical arrangements? If Rohingya don’t want to return what can we do? We will not send them forcefully.”

Kalam called on the international community to put pressure on Myanmar to accept “some logical and acceptable demands,” in order for any repatriation to take place……’

NYT

“…..On Tuesday, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, warned that forcing the first batch of about 2,200 Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh to return to ground zero of mass violence against the minority Muslim group would be a “clear violation” of core international legal principles…..”

“……A coalition of 42 humanitarian and civil society groups has deemed the repatriation process “dangerous and premature.”……..”

NYT

“……Members of the Myanmar military were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group, the people said. The military exploited Facebook’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the internet. Human rights groups blame the anti-Rohingya propaganda for inciting murders, rapes and the largest forced human migration in recent history...…”

WSJ

“…..Defendants Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were entrapped by police officers who planted classified documents on them to disrupt their reporting into atrocities in Rakhine state, according to their defense. Myanmar has been accused by United Nations investigators of genocide in a crackdown launched a year ago against ethnic Rohingya Muslims that left about 10,000 people dead and forced more than 700,000 to relief camps in Bangladesh.  Messrs. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo shed light on abuses that included the massacre of 10 Rohingya men and boys in the village of Inn Din. Their photos of the victims, who were tied together before being executed, prompted a rare admission of wrongdoing by Myanmar’s military, which has otherwise rejected claims that it violated human rights in what it calls an antiterrorism campaign……”

Document:  Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar

Contents Page I. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

3 II. Mandate and methodology …………………………………………………………………………..

3 A. Mandate …………………………………………………………………………………………….

3 B. Methodology ………………………………………………………………………………………

3 C. Legal framework …………………………………………………………………………………

4 III. Context….. ………………………………………………………………………………………………..

4 IV. Emblematic situations …………………………………………………………………………………

5 A. Rakhine State ……………………………………………………………………………………..

5 B. Kachin and Shan States………………………………………………………………………..

11 C. Fundamental freedoms …………………………………………………………………………

14 V. Hallmarks of Tatmadaw operations ………………………………………………………………

14 A. Targeting civilians ………………………………………………………………………………

15 B. Sexual violence …………………………………………………………………………………..

15 C. Exclusionary rhetoric …………………………………………………………………………..

15 D. Impunity…………………………………………………………………………………………….

15 VI. Crimes under international law …………………………………………………………………….

16 A. Genocide ……………………………………………………………………………………………

16 B. Crimes against humanity ……………………………………………………………………..

16 C. War crimes …………………………………………………………………………………………

17 VII. Responsibility …………………………………………………………………………………………….

17 VIII. Accountability ……………………………………………………………………………………………

18 IX. Main conclusions and recommendations ………………………………………………………..

19

NYT

Reuters

“…..The panel, set up last year, interviewed 875 victims and witnesses in Bangladesh and other countries, and analyzed documents, videos, photographs and satellite images…..”

United Nations

Dr. Peter Salama, Deputy Director-General of Emergency Preparedness and Response for the UN World Health Organization (WHO) told journalists in Geneva that “thousands of lives” had been saved so far, thanks to the joint efforts of the Bangladesh Government, WHO and partners.

Deadly disease outbreaks have also been held at bay in Cox’s Bazar despite “all the conditions being in place for a massive epidemic”, he said, noting that outbreaks of measles, diphtheria, polio, cholera and rubella have been contained thanks to preventive inoculation campaigns that have required four million doses of vaccine.

“We need to sustain the vigilance for early warnings of infectious diseases,” Dr. Salama said. “That is still a major risk due to the environmental situation, the poor sanitation, the massive overcrowding, the way these people are being housed and we need to maintain our ability to scale-up outbreak response as required.”

His call to scale up help was echoed in Geneva by IOM, the UN migration agency, spokesperson Joel Millman.

“This was the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world and the challenges have been immense,” he said, highlighting comments by the agency’s Chief of Mission in Bangladesh Giorgi Gigauri. “Countless lives have been saved thanks to the generosity of the Government of Bangladesh, the local community and donor s and the hard work of all those involved in the humanitarian response. But we now face the very real threat that if more funding is not urgently secured, lives will once again be at risk.”

One year on from the exodus sparked by a military operation likened to ethnic cleansing by UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, more than 720,000 Rohingya people have arrived in Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh.

They have joined an estimated 200,000 Rohingya refugees who were previously displaced.

One of the camps, Kutupalong, shelters more than 600,000 refugees, making it the largest and most densely populated refugee settlement in the world, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In addition to the challenge of providing people’s basic needs – shelter, water and sanitation and healthcare – the agency has carried out huge engineering work to reduce the risk of landslides and flooding.

This also involved mobilizing and training hundreds of refugee volunteers to serve as first responders in the event of a natural disaster, although the camps have largely withstood the adverse weather.

Many of them suffered gender-based violence “either prior or during the course of their flight” from Myanmar, WHO’s Dr. Salama said, adding that only one fifth of them will give birth in a suitable healthcare facility.

Partner agency UNHCR also underlined the calls for the international community to step up support for the Rohingya, who are stateless and unable to return to Myanmar.

This is despite the UN’s signing of an official Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Myanmar in June, to help establish conditions conducive for the safe, dignified and sustainable repatriation of the Rohingya.

According to OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the mainly Muslim Rohingya communities that have stayed in Rakhine state require urgent – and in some cases lifesaving – help.

Some 660,000 people are in need across Rakhine state including more than 176,000 in Northern Rakhine, OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke said.

“We stand ready to go there as soon as access allows,” he added.” Most humanitarian organizations that have been working in Northern Rakhine state for years have still not been able to resume programmes and services for these population which are some of the most vulnerable in the world.”

To date, the $950 million Rohingya 2018 appeal is only just over 30 per cent funded.

Pulitzer Center

‘….. “The U.N. and policymakers around the globe are fully aware that the persecution of the Rohingya will eventually be classified legally as a genocide,” says Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy in Washington and author of The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide. “Just like Rwanda, the international community will hem and haw until the removal of the Rohingya from Myanmar has been completed and action is no longer necessary. We are then likely to see some low-level military commanders carted off to The Hague as scapegoats to be tried for the crimes against humanity of an entire society.”…..’

NYT

“……Inside, a row of men sat huddled against the wall as armed police and immigration officers stood over them. They were, we had been given the impression, among the 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who had fled northern Rakhine State in Myanmar for Bangladesh last year in an exodus that the United States and other countries condemned as ethnic cleansing.

NY Times