Rohingya refugees
Rohingya refugees including children and women wait outside a fence of a health clinic at the Kutupalong, Coxabazar in Bangladesh. Photo: Abir Abdullah/EPA-EFE

Myanmar is willing to take back all 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled to Bangladesh if they volunteer to return, the countryโ€™s national security adviser U Thaung Tun said on Saturday.

He was speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a regional security conference in Singapore, where he was asked if the situation in Myanmarโ€™s Rakhine state, where most Rohingya live, could trigger use of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework of the United Nations.

Ready for a challenge? Click here to take our quiz and show off your knowledge!

The R2P framework was adopted at the 2005 UN World Summit in which nations agreed to protect their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and accepted a collective responsibility to encourage and help each other to uphold this commitment. โ€œIf you can send back 700,000 on a voluntary basis, we are willing to receive them,โ€ Thaung Tun said. โ€œCan this be called ethnic cleansing?

โ€œThere is no war going on, so itโ€™s not war crimes. Crimes against humanity, that could be a consideration, but we need clear evidence. These serious charges should be proved and they should not be bandied about lightly.โ€

Since August 2017, about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a military crackdown in mainly Buddhist Myanmar; many reporting killings, rape and arson on a large scale, the UN and other aid organisations have said.

Ready for a challenge? Click here to take our quiz and show off your knowledge!

The United Nations and aid agencies have described the crackdown on the Rohingya as โ€œa textbook example of ethnic cleansingโ€, an accusation Myanmar rejects.

Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed in January to complete the voluntary repatriation of the refugees within two years. Myanmar signed an agreement with the United Nations on Thursday aimed at eventually allowing the Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh to return safely and by choice.

It also said it would set up an independent commission to investigate โ€œthe violation of human rights and related issuesโ€ in Rakhine State following the army operation there in response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents on security posts.

Thaung Tun said that the narrative of what happened in Rakhine was โ€œincomplete and misleadingโ€.

โ€œMyanmar does not deny that what is unfolding in northern Rakhine is a humanitarian crisis,โ€ he said. โ€œThere is no denying that the Muslim community in Rakhine has suffered. The Buddhist Rakhine, Hindu and other ethnic minorities have suffered no less.โ€

He said that while the military had the right to defend the country, if investigations showed they had acted illegally, action would be taken.

4 replies on “Myanmar willing to take back all Rohingya refugees: Top official”