Dhaka, Dec 19: Bangladesh and Myanmar Tuesday reaffirmed their commitment to begin repatriating Rohingya refugees from January, despite growing concern that their safety is still not assured should they return.
The foreign secretaries of Bangladesh and Myanmar met in Dhaka to finalise the agreement signed November 23 for the voluntary return of nearly three-quarters of a million stateless Rohingya living in refugee camps along the border.
A new working group would “ensure commencement of repatriation within two months” by developing a timetable for the verification of refugee identities and logistics of their return, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “Now, we will start the next step of our work,” Bangladesh foreign minister A.H. Mahmood Ali told reporters after the meeting.
But there is growing doubt that the persecuted minority will be safe if returned to Rakhine state, where Doctors Without Borders said nearly 7,000 Rohingya were killed in a month of violence.
An estimated 655,000 refugees from the stateless group have poured across the border into Bangladesh since August, fleeing what the US and United Nations have described as ethnic cleansing. UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he had received no assurances that international observers would be allowed into northern Rakhine to monitor the return of the Rohingya.
“We have seen no interest or desire to invite my office in. So we are sceptical of that,” he told AFP in an interview Monday. AGENCIES
