Dhaka, Jan 27 (PTI) Bangladesh and Myanmar on Thursday resumed talks on repatriation of displaced Rohingya refugees back to their homeland, nearly a year after the dialogue was suspended following a military takeover of the neighbouring country.
The first-ever meeting of the newly-formed technical level ad-hoc task force for verification of the displaced persons from Rakhine was held on Thursday virtually between Bangladesh and Myanmar, a foreign office statement said.
It said “both sides expressed readiness” to continue working closely to address “reasons causing delay in the verification” of the past residency of the displaced people from Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
According to the statement, Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) Shah Rizwan Hayat and Myanmar’s Deputy Director General of Immigration and Population ministry Ye Tun Oo led their respective sides in the talks.
The Myanmar delegation detailed “the technical difficulties and information gaps” on the issue but assured their counterpart of their cooperation to complete pending verification, it said.
Tun Oo expressed optimism that the task force would be instrumental to complete the verification process.
The statement said that Hayat reminded the Myanmar side of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s humanitarian gesture in extending makeshift refuge to the huge number of displaced persons from Rakhine despite numerous constraints and challenges faced by Bangladesh.
Hayat “expressed dismay over the slow pace of verification of past residency by Myanmar and offered all cooperation under the three bilateral instruments, to expeditiously complete the verification process,” it added.
He said that solving difficulties and gaps in pending verification will pave the way for the early commencement of the sustainable repatriation of Rohingyas.
He pointed out that the issue also demanded “creation of conducive environment in Rakhine and confidence building among them (Rohingyas)”.
Myanmar military seized the power on February 1, 2021 detaining the country’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The military coup took place at a time when Bangladesh was spearheading a desperate campaign for safe return of some 1.1 million Rohingyas.
Over a million Rohingyas fled Myanmar to Bangladesh since a military clampdown began there in August 2017 to oust a predominantly Muslim ethnic group from their homeland at Rakhine state.
The United Nations has termed it a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing while rights group called the campaign a “genocide”.
After initial resistance, Bangladesh opened its border for the fleeting Rohingyas on humanitarian ground and since then Cox’s Bazar that borders Rakhine state has become a makeshift home for hundreds of the refugees.
Bangladesh has so far provided biometric data of 830,000 Rohingyas to Myanmar authorities who have verified only 42,000 of them.
The repatriation attempts failed twice due to trust deficit among the Rohingyas about their safety and security in Rakhine state. PTI AR ZH ZH ZH
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