MYANMAR, BANGLADESH SIGN MoU FOR RETURN OF ROHINGYA REFUGEES
Not clear how many will be allowed back and how their safety will be ensured
BANGLADESH and Myanmar have agreed to start repatriating Rohingya refugees in two months, Dhaka said yesterday, as global pressure mounts over the refugee crisis.
More than 620,000 Rohingya have poured into Bangladesh since August, fleeing from a Myanmar military crackdown that Washington said this week clearly constituted “ethnic cleansing”.
After weeks of tussling over the terms of repatriation, the two sides inked a deal in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw yesterday following talks between Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Dhaka’s Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali.
Dhaka said the two sides had agreed to start returning the refugees in two months.
It said a working group would be set up within three weeks to decide on the arrangements for the repatriation.
Ali said: “This is a primary step. (They) will take back (Rohingya). Now we have to start working.”
It remains unclear how many Rohingya will be allowed back and how long the process will take.
Rights groups have raised concerns about the process, including where the minority would be resettled after hundreds of their villages were razed, and how their safety would be ensured in a country where anti-Muslim sentiment is surging.
The signing of the deal came ahead of a highly-anticipated visit to both nations by Pope Francis, who has been outspoken about his sympathy for the plight of the Rohingya.
The stateless Rohingya have been the target of communal violence and vicious anti-Muslim sentiment in mainly Buddhist Myanmar for years.
They have also been systematically oppressed by the government, which stripped the minority of citizenship and severely restricts their movement, as well as their access to basic services.
The latest unrest erupted after Rohingya rebels attacked police posts on Aug 25.
The army backlash rained violence across northern Rakhine, with refugees recounting nightmarish scenes of soldiers and Buddhist mobs slaughtering villagers and burning down entire communities.
The military denies all allegations but has restricted access to the conflict zone. Suu Kyi’s government has blocked visas for a UN-fact finding mission tasked with probing accusations of military abuse. AFP
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis visits Myanmar next week, a delicate trip for the world’s most senior Christian to a majority Buddhist country accused by Washington DC of the “ethnic cleansing” of Muslim Rohingya people.
He will also visit Bangladesh to where more than 600,000 people have fled from what Amnesty International called “crimes against humanity”, including murder, rape torture and forcible displacement, allegations the Myanmar military denies.
The trip is so delicate that some of the pope’s advisers have warned him against even saying the word “Rohingya”, lest he set off a diplomatic incident that could turn the country’s military and government against minority Christians.
The term is toxic in Myanmar, where many follow the government line that the Rohingya are not an indigenous group, but are “Bengalis” — shorthand for illegal settlers from Bangladesh.
The most tense moments of the trip from Sunday to Dec 2 are likely to be private meetings with army head Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and, separately, civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Myanmar does not recognise Rohingya as citizens nor as a group with its own identity, posing a dilemma for Francis as he visits a country of 51 million people where only around 700,000 are Roman Catholics.
“He risks either compromising his moral authority or putting in danger the Christians of that country,” said Father Thomas Reese, a prominent United States author and analyst at Religion News Service.
“I have great admiration for the pope and his abilities, but someone should have talked him out of making this trip,” he wrote.
Vatican sources said some in the Holy See believed the trip was decided too hastily after full diplomatic ties were established in May during a visit by Suu Kyi, whose global esteem as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate had been tarnished by expressing doubts about the rights abuse allegations and failing to condemn the military.
Francis will meet Rohingya refugees on the second leg of his trip in Dhaka. Agencies