Aid groups working in Myanmar's crisis-hit Rakhine State are scrambling on how to respond if the government pushes forward with controversial plans to create new internment camps for displaced Rohingya, documents obtained by IRIN reveal.

The international community will rue the day if they decide to go along with this plan. To put it bluntly, this is a plan for an open-air Rohingya prison, surrounded by barbed wire, hostile security forces and hateful Rakhine communities. The international community should boycott this proposal and demand that the right to return means going back to the locations where people lived before this latest wave of ethnic cleansing, and rebuilding there.

The internal papers shed light on the urgent, behind-the-scenes debate aid groups are having in the wake of a refugee crisis that has pushed almost 600,000 Rohingya from northern Rakhine State into neighbouring Bangladesh over the last two months.

A 4 October “working document” shows that international NGOs are drawing up a list of likely scenarios and “red lines” – clear deal-breakers that would force humanitarian groups not to offer aid in the proposed camps.

But there is disagreement among the NGO representatives over what would constitute a clear red line, the document shows.

Read the full article on the Myanmar internment plan by Emanuel Stoakes at IRIN