Myanmar has to take back Rohingya refugees, Kofi Annan tells UN Security Council

[BDforever]

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Former UN chief Kofi Annan has urged the Security Council to press for the return of half a million Rohingya refugees to their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Annan, who led the Myanmar government-formed ‘Advisory Commission on Rakhine State’ to probe the crisis, emphasised changing the law to grant citizenship to the Muslim minority population.

Annan was speaking at a meeting organised by the UK and France at the UN headquarters in New York on Friday. Representatives to the UN from Bangladesh and Myanmar also addressed the meeting.

Over half a million Rohingyas have fled the border state of Rakhine since a military crackdown began on Aug 25.

About 400,000 other Rohingya refugees have been living in Bangladesh for the past few decades after fleeing persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.

The latest violence began on the day Annan’s commission announced its findings, as Rohingya insurgents attacked several border police outposts and a military encampment in western Rakhine state.

The commission had recommended granting citizenship to Rohingyas and the repatriation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The UN is weighing action on the issue.

"I hope the resolution that comes out urges the Myanmar government to really press ahead and create conditions that would allow the refugees to return with dignity and with a sense of security," Annan told reporters after a closed-door meeting with the council.

"They should not be returned to camps. They should help rebuild," he said Annan said he was hopeful the Myanmar government would adopt the recommendations of his commission and bring stability to Rakhine.

"The international community is now beginning to put pressure on the military," he said.

Without action "we are going to have a long-term festering problem" in the region that "can be very serious, down the line," warned the former UN secretary-general.

Despite her unwillingness to grant citizenship to Rohingyas, Myanmar’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has made assurances that the recommendations of the Annan commission will be implemented.


She has also promised to take back 'verified refugees' who have fled to Bangladesh.

Both countries would benefit from bilateral cooperation and border security, said Annan.

Bangladesh Permanent Representative to the UN Masud Bin Momen repeated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s comments at the UN General Assembly that the solution to the crisis lays in Myanmar.

Bangladesh has been patient despite Myanmar’s violation of its airspace and provocations, he said.

Momen added there was a significant difference between the Myanmar government’s remarks on the issue and the situation on the ground.

The UN Security Council has discussed the Rohingya issue three times between Aug 28 and Sept 13. On Sept 13, it expressed its concern regarding the situation in Rakhine state.

Permanent members Russia and China have sided with Myanmar on the issue, while the UK and France have opposed it. The US has condemned the violence in Rakhine.
source: https://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/201...refugees-kofi-annan-tells-un-security-council

 

[Banglar Bir]

https://www.facebook.com/

 

[EastBengalPro]

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• 

Former UN chief Kofi Annan has urged the Security Council to press for the return of half a million Rohingya refugees to their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Annan, who led the Myanmar government-formed ‘Advisory Commission on Rakhine State’ to probe the crisis, emphasised changing the law to grant citizenship to the Muslim minority population.

Annan was speaking at a meeting organised by the UK and France at the UN headquarters in New York on Friday. Representatives to the UN from Bangladesh and Myanmar also addressed the meeting.

Over half a million Rohingyas have fled the border state of Rakhine since a military crackdown began on Aug 25.

About 400,000 other Rohingya refugees have been living in Bangladesh for the past few decades after fleeing persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.

The latest violence began on the day Annan’s commission announced its findings, as Rohingya insurgents attacked several border police outposts and a military encampment in western Rakhine state.

The commission had recommended granting citizenship to Rohingyas and the repatriation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The UN is weighing action on the issue.

"I hope the resolution that comes out urges the Myanmar government to really press ahead and create conditions that would allow the refugees to return with dignity and with a sense of security," Annan told reporters after a closed-door meeting with the council.

"They should not be returned to camps. They should help rebuild," he said Annan said he was hopeful the Myanmar government would adopt the recommendations of his commission and bring stability to Rakhine.

"The international community is now beginning to put pressure on the military," he said.

Without action "we are going to have a long-term festering problem" in the region that "can be very serious, down the line," warned the former UN secretary-general.

Despite her unwillingness to grant citizenship to Rohingyas, Myanmar’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has made assurances that the recommendations of the Annan commission will be implemented.


She has also promised to take back 'verified refugees' who have fled to Bangladesh.

Both countries would benefit from bilateral cooperation and border security, said Annan.

Bangladesh Permanent Representative to the UN Masud Bin Momen repeated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s comments at the UN General Assembly that the solution to the crisis lays in Myanmar.

Bangladesh has been patient despite Myanmar’s violation of its airspace and provocations, he said.

Momen added there was a significant difference between the Myanmar government’s remarks on the issue and the situation on the ground.

The UN Security Council has discussed the Rohingya issue three times between Aug 28 and Sept 13. On Sept 13, it expressed its concern regarding the situation in Rakhine state.

Permanent members Russia and China have sided with Myanmar on the issue, while the UK and France have opposed it. The US has condemned the violence in Rakhine.
source: https://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/201...refugees-kofi-annan-tells-un-security-council

Myanmar is getting cornered day by day!

 

[Banglar Bir]

Kofi Annan, where are the Rohingyas going to return?
Myanmar military has long institutionalised its genocide
Saturday, October 14, 2017

Suu Kyi's "50% Muslim villages still intact" speech and
Kofi Annan's "let the Rohingyas return home in dignified manner" discourse.
What's wrong with them? Everything.
Here is what is fundamentally wrong with Kofi Annan's stance and report:

1) In the case where even UN is compelled to use Milosevic's euphemism "ethnic cleansing" - but what most of us in the genocide studies KNOW to be a textbook example of a genocide, Mr Annan blatantly disregards the existence of the R2P, a principle he himself championed out of his personal guilt for his well-documented failure in raising his voice as head of the UN Peacekeeping Operations on the eve of Rwanda Genocide in 1994.

2) the Burmese military had a strategy to completely derail and demolish the Kofi Annan's involvement since the establishment of his commission in 2016.
The military leaders had made it absolutely clear from the get-go that they did NOT welcome his involvement nor accept the thrust of the recommendations.

For the recommendations go against the military's institutionalized genocidal scheme and worldview, which rests on the three ideological (racist, anti-history) pillars: that Rohingyas do NOT belong in Burma; that Rakhine never had any significant Muslim influence or presence; and that Rohingyas pose a national security threat as potential proxy for any future Muslim take-over of Western Burma.

3) the very "civilian-led" committee Suu Kyi formed is headed by the Social Welfare Minister who just declared that the State (gov) is reclaiming all burned land - yes, belonging to the Rohingyas (in a zone stretching 100 Kilometer).
So, where are the Rohingyas going to go?
Even the 120,000+ Rohingya IDPs inside Burma in camps since Oct 2012 are NOT allowed to return homes and neighbourhoods. Some have been marked as the sites of Special Economic Zone.
Here is Kofi Annan's "let the refugees go home" press conference - 11 minutes.

I think he meant Rohingyas whose name and right to self-identify he is not sanctioned by Suu Kyi to respect.

That's followed by French and UK Reps' Q and A with the press.

Here is the reality check:

Myanmar Troops to Rohingyas before slaughtering them, burning their villages down (over 250 in total) and expelling over 530,000 in 6 weeks (while many thousands still wish to flee, but are trapped inside Burma, with no food and no freedom to seek food):
“You do not belong here – go to Bangladesh."

Here is the UN OHCHR's report - 12 page and most damning in its assessment.
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/MM/CXBMissionSummaryFindingsOctober2017.pdf
After the arrival of half-a-million refugees in Bangladesh 60% of whom are women and children , with unknown thousands of Rohingya males presumed slaughtered, the world's body shows it is in coma, from which it is unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future.

Not even a non-binding statement is forthcoming from this body - after 7 weeks of this largest humanitarian catastrophe, resulting from a textbook example of a genocide in Burma.
When UN Sec-Gen talked about "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" he was not only being politically pragmatic but intellectually off: Ethnic cleansing was Milosevic's euphemism designed to evade the international conventions such as the genocide and the crimes against humanity.

When the media, human rights charities and UN adopt the language of the supposedly suiciced genocidal killer then the oppressed have no recourse to the global justice or governance system.

Annan in my view is a moral coward, a career bureaucrat, who has always saved his own ***, in the face of others' monumental sufferings. Remember Rwanda? Just the only most obvious example.

The problem is UN: it is SYSTEMIC. It is the collection of STATES, ruled by States' interests, while paying to the lip service to "We the People".
I can't think of a bigger System failure in recorded human history.
http://www.maungzarni.net/2017/10/kofi-annan-where-are-rohingyas-going-to.html

 

[El Sidd]

They should have a separate homeland.

Neither bangdsh nor Myanmar is helping these people