REPATRIATION CLEARANCE

Dhaka to send another list of Rohingyas

Diplomatic Correspondent | Published: 23:43, Mar 28,2018 | Updated: 00:24, Mar 29,2018

The government would send the second list of Rohingyas for clearance of the Myanmar authorities for their repatriation to Rakhine State.
The government made the decision at a meeting on Wednesday, as sending list and getting names cleared by Myanmar authorities was a continuous process, a senior foreign ministry official said.
Foreign minister M Shahidul Haque presided over the meeting.
Asked about the initial decision by the two sides on sending Rohingyas staying on the zero line first, the official said that the process of repatriation should not be stuck up on a certain point.
Myanmar authorities visited the no man’s land and tried to encourage them to return to Rakhine, he said, adding that the Rohingyas staying there did not agree to go back without safety and citizenship.
A meeting of the joint working group at foreign secretary-level is expected to be held in April. The Myanmar government cleared, in two phases, only 567 Rohingyas from a list of 8,032 handed over by Bangladesh authorities on February 16.
Over 6,88,000 Rohingyas have fled atrocities in Rakhine State by Myanmar security forces and entered Bangladesh since August 25, 2017, what the UN experts have called the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency with elements of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Officials estimated that the new influx already took to 11.07 lakh the number of Myanmar people living in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh and Myanmar signed three deals on November 23 and December 19 in 2017 and January 16, 2018 for setting modalities of physical arrangement for partial repatriation, subject to verification by Myanmar authorities, within two years of the transfer of the first batch of over 7,73,000 Rohingyas who had fled violence in Rakhine and crossed the border since October in 2016.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net