Rohingya Refugees Wary as China Develops Plan for Repatriation

VOA
Ingyin Naing
August 03, 2023 

Two Rohingya children at the sprawling Balukhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, June 9, 2023. (Noor Hossain/VOA)

Rohingya refugees living in squalid and sprawling camps in Bangladesh are casting a skeptical eye on a Chinese initiative to facilitate their return to Myanmar, where they were subjected to a campaign of murder and burning by the same military forces that now rule the country.

"We want to return home. However, under this pilot scheme, the Myanmar military will confine us in camps. They won't allow us to go back to our homes and villages," Aung Myaing, a Rohingya relief volunteer at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, told VOA by phone.

In Myanmar, Grief and Fury After an Attack on a School

The New York Times  

By Sui-Lee Wee
Sept. 23, 2022

 Eleven children died when soldiers fired on the school, where they said rebels had taken cover. “This is a war crime,” said a U.N. expert.

Damage from the Sept. 16 attack on a school in Let Yet Kone village, in the Sagaing region of central Myanmar. Credit...Social Media, via Reuters

 

 It was the noon hour, and children were playing outside the school, squeezing in their last few minutes of fun before lessons began. Suddenly, there came the roar of helicopters overhead.

Bhone Tayza, 7, looked up. His cousin shouted at him to run, and both of them dashed to hide in a hole in the trunk of a tamarind tree. Then Bhone Tayza remembered he had left his school bag in his classroom and ran back to get it. Soldiers started firing rockets.