Rohingya who moved to island are learning job skills

Japanese philanthropic group Nippon Foundation’s Chairman Sasakawa Yohei

Japan’s Nippon Foundation will spend $2 million to help move tens of thousands more Rohingya refugees to a remote island in Bangladesh and provide them with skills training, the charity’s chairman said.

Speaking to The Associated Press last weekend after a visit to Bhashan Char, Yohei Sasakawa praised the support the government has provided to refugees on the island and said it’s a step toward returning them to Myanmar.

Some 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar for Bangladesh after August 2017, when the military in Buddhist-majority Myanmar began a harsh crackdown following an attack by insurgents. The crackdown included rapes, killings and the torching of thousands of homes, and was termed ethnic cleansing by global rights groups and the U.N., while the United States called it genocide.

Efforts to repatriate refugees to Myanmar under a 2017 agreement meditated by China have failed at least twice, and seem only more distant as the security situation worsens. Fighting has spread across much of Myanmar as the ruling junta loses ground to rebel and separatist groups in the country›s long-running civil war.MDT/AP