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Bangladesh scraps bid to repatriate 70000 Rohingyas

November 17, 2018 | Expert Insights

Mass protests among Rohingya minorities in Bangladesh halt efforts to send them back to Myanmar where they are treated in a deplorable manner.

Background

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, concentrated in the western state of Rakhine. The Myanmar government regards the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and refuses to grant them citizenship status since 1982, effectively making them stateless and with no access to education and hospitals.

More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The huge exodus of Rohingya began in August 2017 after Myanmar security forces launched a brutal crackdown following attacks by an insurgent group on guard posts. The scale, organization and ferocity of the operation led to accusations from the international community, including the UN, of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Most people in Buddhist-majority Myanmar do not accept that the Rohingya Muslims are a native ethnic group, viewing them as “Bengalis” who entered illegally from Bangladesh, even though generations of Rohingya have lived in Myanmar.

Analysis

The head of Bangladesh’s refugee commission said plans to begin the repatriation of 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar were scrapped after officials were unable to find anyone who wanted to return. The refugees “are not willing to go back now,” Refugee Commissioner Abul Kalam said. He said officials “can’t force them to go” but will continue to try to “motivate them so it happens.” Most people on the government’s repatriation list disappeared into the refugee camps to avoid being sent home, while others joined a large demonstration against the plan.

The United Nations, whose human rights officials had urged Bangladesh to halt the repatriation process even as its refugee agency workers helped to facilitate it, welcomed this development. Firas Al-Khateeb, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Cox’s Bazar, said it was unclear when the process might begin again. “We want their repatriation, but it has to be voluntary, safe and smooth,” he said. Negotiations for repatriation have been in the works for months, but plans in January to begin sending refugees back were called off amid concerns among aid workers and Rohingya that their return would be met with violence.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali said “there is no question of forcible repatriation. We gave them shelter, so why should we send them back forcibly?”. At the many refugee camps, Bangladeshi refugee officials implored the Rohingyas to return to Myanmar which was opposed immediately by the refugees. Bangladesh had planned to send an initial group of 2,251 back from mid-November at a rate of 150 per day.

Myanmar officials, in the capital, Naypyitaw, said they were ready to receive the refugees. Despite those assurances, human rights activists said conditions were not yet safe for the Rohingya to go back. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who hopes to retain power in December elections, has repeatedly complained that hosting more than a million Rohingya is taxing local resources.

Foreign leaders, including U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, criticized Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader Aung San Suu Kyi this week on the sidelines of a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Singapore for her handling of the Rohingya crisis. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country would continue working with international partners including the U.N. “to ensure that the Rohingya themselves are part of any decisions on their future.”

Bangladesh officials declined to say whether an attempt at repatriation would be made again.

Assessment

Our assessment is that Myanmar intended to destroy in whole or in part the Rohingya Muslim minorities due to the age-old conflicts between the Rakhine Buddhists and Rakhine Muslims. The resentment of the minority group has run deep for generations. The refugees who are aware of this, even if assured by the Myanmar government, would not return in the fear that they would be eliminated. We believe that without overhauling the culture of pervasive prejudice in Myanmar, it would be impossible to make any change to the present situation.