Another Myanmar team in Bangladesh to discuss Rohingya repatriation pilot project

By SM Najmus Sakib

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) - Another Myanmar delegation on Thursday arrived in Bangladesh’s southeastern Cox’s Bazar to discuss a project to repatriate Rohingya refugees.

The 14-member delegation will meet some 23 Rohingya people to discuss possible repatriation with Rohingya refugees, said Md Shamsud Douza, Bangladesh’s additional refugee, relief and repatriation commissioner.

“The Myanmar team will hold discussions with the refugees to convince them to join the repatriation under the pilot program. They (the team) will stay for two days in Cox’s Bazar,” he told Anadolu.

On March 15, a 22-member team from Myanmar made a similar visit to a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar to verify some 400 Rohingya as part of the pilot project to take back some of the refugees.

On May 5, a Rohingya delegation together with some Bangladeshi refugee officials went to Myanmar to see the situation of repatriation.

The refugees, however, expressed dissatisfaction with the repatriation environment as they want to return home with full citizens' rights.

In the first phase, over 1,100 pre-screened Rohingya are planned to be repatriated under the pilot project.

More than 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims forcibly displaced from Myanmar live in 33 congested refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, with another 30,000 relocated to Bhasan Char, an island in the Bay of Bengal.

Most of the refugees fled a brutal military crackdown in Rakhine, a state on the western coast of Buddhist-majority Myanmar.