Rohingya refugees doubt Myanmar’s assurances on going home

COX‘S BAZAR: Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh were sceptical on Tuesday about their chances of ever going home to Myanmar, even though the government there has given an assurance it would accept people verified as refugees.

More than half a million Rohingya have fled from a Myanmar military crackdown in Rakhine State launched in late August that has been denounced by the United Nations as ethnic cleansing and placed a huge burden on Bangladesh.

Myanmar denies ethnic cleansing, saying it is only fighting Rohingya terrorists who have claimed attacks on the security forces.

The government has said anyone verified as a refugee from Myanmar will be allowed to return under a process agreed with Bangladesh in 1993.

Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Monday to work on a repatriation plan, and a Myanmar government spokesman confirmed it would go along with process, provided people could verify their status with paperwork.

But many refugees are scornful.

“Everything was burned, even people were burned,” said a refugee who identified himself as Abdullah, dismissing the chances that people would have documents to prove a right to stay in Myanmar.

At the root of the problem is the refusal by Buddhist-majority Myanmar to grant citizenship to members of a Muslim minority seen by a mostly unsympathetic, if not hostile, society as interlopers from Bangladesh.

Though Myanmar has not granted Rohingya citizenship, under the 1993 procedure, it agreed to take back people who could prove they had been Myanmar residents.

But a day after Bangladesh and Myanmar announced apparent progress, a Bangladeshi foreign ministry official appeared resigned to a difficult process.