Erasing the Rohingya: point of no return

Myanmar government is taking steps that threaten to make the purge of the Rohingya permanent.

(Reuters) - Having fled waves of violence, more than 900,000 members of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority now languish in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

A Reuters investigation has found the Myanmar government is taking steps that threaten to make the purge of the Rohingya permanent.

Myanmar’s plans to begin the repatriation on Nov. 15 with a group of some 2,200 Rohingya collapsed when they refused to go unless they were granted citizenship and allowed back to their original homes.

Hussein Ahmed says if he can’t recover his land, there’s no point returning.

Sitting in a shack in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, he examines satellite photos of Inn Din, the village where he was born 73 years ago and fled during the army crackdown last year. It’s almost unrecognizable. All the Muslim homes are gone but the Buddhist homes remain. Ahmed points to where his once stood, a newly-built two-story structure. In its place, there’s a long, red-roofed building.

"We have already left our country four times -- if we go back and come back here again, it is not fair as we want to get back our rights (as Myanmar citizens). We don’t want to stay in this country," he said.

Satellite images show a dramatic transformation of the areas where the Rohingya once lived in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State before the army ousted them. The northern reaches of this region were once a Muslim-majority enclave in the overwhelmingly Buddhist nation.

Hundreds of new houses are being built in villages where the Rohingya once resided. Many of these villages were burned, then flattened and scraped by bulldozers. The new homes are being occupied mainly by Buddhists, some from other parts of Rakhine. The security forces are also building new facilities in these areas.

Myanmar has been ready to take back the refugees since January, the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement said in reply to questions from Reuters. The government was investing "all physical (efforts) and wisdom to overcome the challenges that we faced in Rakhine State," it said in a statement.

Noor Islam, from Taung Bazar in Rakhine, now lives with 20 members of his extended family in a shack in Kutupalong refugee camp. He said he carried his 90-year-old mother for much of the journey to Bangladesh. In Rakhine, he used to own several pharmacies in Taung Bazar. "My shops were filled with medicines when I fled," he said.

Now, he sells medicines from a rickety bamboo table.

Noor Islam recently flipped through receipts that show the tax he paid on two acres of land where a cluster of mint-green houses now stand in his village of Taung Bazar.

"In this picture I see there are our houses that they had burnt, and now they are putting up buildings," he said, holding a satellite image of Taung Bazar. "We now know from people that they have taken all our houses and land, but who took them, we don’t know."

An official at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation in Naypyitaw told Reuters that Noor Islam’s tax receipts looked genuine. Nonetheless, the official, Than Htut, said that since Rohingya aren’t citizens in Myanmar, they would have to "negotiate" with local authorities to recover their land or receive compensation.

Aung San Suu Kyi told an audience in Singapore in August that Myanmar is pursuing "the voluntary, safe and dignified return" of the displaced Rohingya. A return of some refugees is possible, to be sure, as Myanmar tries to ease international pressure over the crisis.

"We don’t consider that the circumstances right now are conducive for a return. However, if return happens, it has to be in safety, dignity, and on a voluntary basis," a spokesman for UNHCR, Firas Al-Khateeb said.

A clear picture of the changes on the ground has been elusive, however, because of restrictions on travel to the region. To document Myanmar’s plans for the Rohingya, Reuters analysed satellite photographs of construction work in the region from the past year and an unpublished resettlement map drafted by the government. Reporters also interviewed national and state-level government officials in charge of resettlement policy, aid workers, refugees in the camps in Bangladesh, and Rohingya still living in northern Rakhine.

The government is both building some of the new homes in northern Rakhine and helping to facilitate the Buddhist resettlement push, according to local officials and new settlers. The campaign is being spearheaded by Buddhist nationalists who want to establish a Buddhist majority in the area.

Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said the Reuters findings showed the actions of the authorities in Myanmar were making the expulsion of the Rohingya irreversible.

The Rohingya exodus has produced the world’s biggest refugee camp, the result of "ethnic cleansing" with "genocidal intent," according to the United Nations. An offensive by Myanmar security forces last year in northern Rakhine that has driven out more than 730,000 Rohingya included mass killings and gang rapes, the United Nations said. Myanmar rejects these accusations, saying the crackdown was a legitimate response to "terrorism".