Some Rohingya refugees will soon be allowed to return home
Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement on Thursday to allow an unspecified number of Rohingya Muslims, who fled across the border to escape violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state, to return home.
More than 620,000 Rohingya have sought refuge in Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when an army crackdown started in response to attacks on a police post by Rohingya insurgents. Bangladesh said the first repatriations would start in two months.
The news came a day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson referred to the violence against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar as "ethnic cleansing."
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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