DHAKA : Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Tuesday to begin by November the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape a Myanmar army crackdown, though doubts about a speedy return are likely to persist.
More than 700,000 Rohingya refugees crossed from the west of mostly Buddhist Myanmar into Bangladesh from August last year after Rohingya insurgent attacks on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping military response.
“We are looking forward to start the repatriation by mid-November,” Bangladesh’s Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque told reporters in Dhaka after a meeting with a Myanmar delegation led by senior foreign ministry official Myint Thu.
Myint Thu hailed what he called a “very concrete result on the commencement of the repatriation”.
“We have put in place a number of measures to make sure that the returnees will have a secure environment for their return,” he told reporters.
However, the U.N. refugee agency said conditions in Rakhine state were “not yet conducive for returns”, stressing that they must be voluntary. Necessary safeguards are “absent” in the region, where it has had only limited access amid continuing restrictions for media and other independent observers, it said.
Leaders of the largely stateless Rohingya community have said they will not return without various demands being met, including the right to Myanmar citizenship.
