Bangladesh forms committee to deal with Rohingya issues

The Bangladesh government would engage with China and Myanmar for reactivating the tripartite mechanism for sending Rohingya people back to Myanmar as the process of repatriation has remained halted for over two years, officials said.

The government has also contacted the Myanmar authorities for a meeting of the joint working group of the two countries to assess the potentials for facilitating repatriation on the ground from Cox’s Bazar to bordering Rakhine.

The government has also formed a ministerial-level national committee for the coordination of law and order and the management of the Rohingya camps and the activities relating to repatriation of the forcibly displaced Rohingya people to their homeland Myanmar.

‘We have sought separate meetings of the joint working group with Myanmar and a trilateral meeting involving China and Myanmar for working on Rohingya repatriation,’ a Bangladesh government official said.

The process of repatriation, which had remained halted over the past two years, should be reassessed to materialise the return of the members of the displaced community, said the official.

Two attempts to start repatriation failed in 2018 as not a single Rohingya expressed willingness to go back to Myanmar citing lack of citizenship and security reasons.    

Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan is the convener with foreign minister, state ministers for disaster, women and children and 13 senior officials of different ministries and divisions are members of the 17-member national committee on coordination, management and law and order relating to the forcibly displaced Rohingya people, according to a gazette notification issued by the Cabinet Division on December 14.

The national committee would also observe, evaluate and review all activities involving the Rohingya people conducted by entities, including the national taskforce on Rohingya people and the national executive committee on relocation of Rohingya people to Bhasan char.

The committee would meet at least once in three months.

Some 8,60,000 Rohingyas, mostly women, children and aged people, entered Bangladesh fleeing unbridled murder, arson and rape during ‘security operations’ by Myanmar military in Rakhine, what the United Nations denounced as ethnic cleansing and genocide, beginning from August 25, 2017.

The latest Rohingya influx took the number of undocumented Myanmar nationals and registered refugees in Bangladesh to over 1.2 million, according to estimates by UN agencies and Bangladesh foreign ministry.

The government has relocated over 1,900 Rohingya people from camps in Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char, an island in Hatiya upazila of Noakhali, as a part of a plan to relocate about 1,00,000 people to decongest the camps on security and safety grounds.

The UN agencies and the foreign rights groups expressed concern over the government’s unilateral steps for relocating the Rohingya people to Bhasan Char.

News Courtesy: https://www.newagebd.net/article/125124/bangladesh-forms-committee-to-deal-with-rohingya-issues