An agreement has been reached between the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh for the Rohingya to return home. But a journalist who has recently returned from the refugee camps sees little prospect of that happening

Sprawling over the low-lying hills of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh is the world’s largest, most densely populated refugee camp. Kutupalong is home to more than 900,000 Muslim Rohingya, the survivors of a murderous onslaught by the army in neighbouring Myanmar.

At least 10,000 Rohingya were killed in 2017 as they were forced from their villages in north-east Rakhine state across the border into Bangladesh; their former homeland is often clearly visible from their makeshift, tarpaulin-clad huts.
With every week that passes it becomes ever more abundantly clear what really happened to the Rohingya in the last few months of 2017, when about 700,000 of them streamed out of Myanmar seeking safety.

The Myanmar authorities have always claimed that the army was merely conducting a counter-insurgency sweep, provoked by a shadowy Rohingya terrorist group. In fact, outside organisations that study such matters are now largely in agreement that what occurred was a premeditated, carefully planned assault, deliberately designed to “destroy, in whole or in part” the Rohingya population of Myanmar, according to the criteria laid down in the United Nations’ 1948 convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide.

This is the verdict announced on 3 December by the respected United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, after it had completed a rigorous investigation. Separately, it is also the verdict of the Public International Law & Policy Group, also based in Washington.