Myanmar to create Muslim-free ‘buffer zone’ in Rakhine state

KOE TAN KAUK, Myanmar, Mar 16 (AFP): Buddhist flags hang limply from bamboo poles at the entrance to Koe Tan Kauk, a "model" village for ethnic Rakhine migrants shuttled north to repopulate an area once dominated by Rohingya Muslims.
The new arrivals are moving to parts of Rakhine state mostly "cleared" of its Rohingya residents, whose villages were bulldozed and reduced to muddy stains on a landscape of lush farmland.
The Rakhine migrants, who come from the poor but relatively stable south, are -- for now -- few in number.
But they carry great expectations as the pioneers of a donor-led "Rakhinisation" plan to upend the demography of the once majority-Muslim area.
"We were really afraid of those Kalars and didn't plan to come here," Chit San Eain, a 28-year-old who has moved with her husband and toddler into a basic hut in Koe Tan Kauk told the news agency, using a pejorative term for Muslims.
"But now that they are no longer here, we have the chance to meet again with our relatives who live up here," she added, the ruins of a Rohingya settlement lying a few kilometres away.
Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from northern Rakhine into Bangladesh since August 25 last year by a Myanmar army offensive against Muslim militants.
Another 300,000 Rohingya were pushed out from the south and centre of Rakhine by army campaigns stretching back to the late 1970s.
The UN has branded last year's military crackdown ethnic cleansing, with a top official saying it carried all the "hallmarks of genocide."
Myanmar vigorously denies the allegations and says refugees are welcome to return.
But so far it has agreed to allow back only 374 of 8,000 refugees whose names have been put forward for the initial phase of repatriation.
Many traumatised Rohingya in Cox's Bazar camps are also refusing to be repatriated to Rakhine -- where holding camps and hostile neighbours await them.