"Rohingya refugees staged mass demonstrations at camps in southeastern Bangladesh on Thursday to demand the world help repatriate them to Myanmar, as they marked the fifth anniversary of a brutal Burmese military offensive that spurred an unprecedented exodus. Officials from the United Nations, the United States and other members of the international community also commemorated the occasion by expressing their support for Rohingya, who refer to Aug. 25 as “Genocide Remembrance Day.” At about two dozen camps in Cox’s Bazar, the district where the refugees are sheltering along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, thousands took part in rallies with the slogan “Hope is Home.” “We no longer want to be refugees. We want to go back to our homeland,” Mohammed Jubair, secretary general of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), said during a rally at the Kutupalong camp in Ukhia, a sub-district in Cox’s Bazar. “I am requesting the international community to exert more pressure on Myanmar for a safe repatriation. Rohingya also demanded that those responsible for the bloody crackdown by the Burmese military that started on Aug. 25, 2017, be brought to justice and that those who were expelled be repatriated to Myanmar’s Rakhine state with full dignity and civil rights. “The world already knows how the Myanmar army killed the Rohingya people. That’s why we cannot forget this day,” said Khin Maung, director of the Rohingya Youth Association, who lives in Cox’s Bazar. “Now we live in camps. Food, living conditions, nothing is good. We’ve been here for a long time. That’s why we want to return to our villages, to our country, as soon as possible.” But the prospect of the stateless Rohingya Muslim refugees returning safely to their villages and townships in their home state of Rakhine has become dimmer because of post-coup bloodshed across Myanmar after Burmese generals seized power last year. A Rohingya youth who attended the Kutupalong rally said he and others worried about what might await them if they return to their Myanmar homes. “We want an end to such a refugee life. But the present situation in Myanmar is not safe enough, we want help from the world community,” Abdur Razzak said. According to one Rohingya human rights activist based in Rakhine, some 600,000 Rohingya who did not flee to Bangladesh in 2017 have been subjected to stricter repression since the 2021 coup and their movements within the state are even more limited. “Currently, they are facing many hardships. They are barred from visiting other villages and subjected to religious and ethnic discrimination all the time,” said activist Zarni Soe. “Now that the AA [Arakan Army] and the Burmese army are fighting again in northern Rakhine state, we might even see worse things coming.”..."