Under international law — and the precepts of basic human decency — the nearly one million Rohingya people driven out of their homeland in Myanmar and crammed into refugee camps in Bangladesh ought to be able to return home. But simply pushing them back across the border, as Bangladesh and Myanmar tried to start doing last week under pressure from China , was wisely suspended. The United Nations and dozens of rights groups dealing with the long-suffering Rohingya objected to the plan because it lacked any assurances that the returnees, members of a Muslim minority in Myanmar who had been the targets of a murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing, would be treated any better than before they fled. With one voice, young and old alike shouted, “We won’t go!” Mercifully, Bangladesh — which has been lauded for providing refuge to the Rohingya — relented. Over 15 months , more than 700,000 Rohingya fled a systematic campaign of killings, rapes and torched villages that the United Nations said “undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law.” Crowding into refugee camps in Bangladesh, they joined more than 200,000 Rohingya who had fled earlier waves of violence.

Source: New York Times November 23, 2018 00:00 UTC