Tens of thousands of Rohingya held demonstrations inside their refugee camps in bangladesh on Sunday, two years after their exodus.
Nearly 750,000 fled their native Rakhine state in Myanmar in August 2017 as a violent crackdown on the ethnic group surged.
On Thursday, bangladesh set up a voluntary return scheme – but not a single Rohingya decided to leave.
They are calling for Myanmar to grant them citizenship before they return.
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar, most of whom live in Rakhine state, and have their own language and culture. But despite living in Myanmar for generations, they are not recognised as citizens or counted in the census.
Myanmar instead considers them to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
On 25 August 2017, Rohingya militants attacked dozens of police posts, killing several officers. The response from authorities, while supposedly an attempt to arrest militants, saw entire villages burned, and civilians attacked, raped and killed, UN investigators found. Local Buddhist mobs were also involved.
The United Nations says it was a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing; the Rohingya call it a “genocide remembrance day”.
Myanmar's military says it was carrying out counterterrorism operations and did not target civilians.
An internal investigation in 2017 cleared the…
