Rohingya activists call for more international pressure on Myanmar

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Rohingya activists in Bangladesh are calling on the international community to increase pressure on Myanmar following a renewed call at the UN for safe and sustainable repatriation of the persecuted minority to their homeland.
Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar have endured decades of systematic discrimination and persecution, including the 2017 military crackdown that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands from Rakhine State.
Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on the human rights situation of the Rohingya and other Myanmar minorities, making it among the latest to call on the government in Naypyidaw to create “conducive conditions for the voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable” repatriation.
“To ensure sustainable repatriation, there should be much more pressure from different sides by the international community on the Myanmar government,” Mohammed Rezuwan Khan, a Rohingya rights activist in Cox’s Bazar, told Arab News this week.

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“All of us Rohingya are eager to return to our homeland. But there should be a conducive situation over there in Rakhine. In the current situation, if we return, the Myanmar government will persecute us again.”
Khan is among more than a million Rohingya languishing in refugee camps in Bangladesh, which for years has hosted and provided them with humanitarian support despite not being a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
The developing country spends an estimated $1.2 billion annually to support the Rohingya, as international aid for the community has been dropping since 2020. The UN World Food Programme cut food rations for the group earlier this year, as its pleas for donations had not been met.
The Rohingya community in Cox’s Bazar is suffering as it seeks certainty about their future, Khan said.
“If we are forced to live here for a longer period, it will create a lost generation of Rohingya,” he said, alluding to the lack of educational and work opportunities for the community.