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BAZAR, YANGON / COX, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Myanmar officials said on Sunday that the country is ready to host more than 2,000 Rohingya refugee Muslims in Bangladesh on November 15, the first group of 5,000 displaced in the country. An agreement passed between neighbors last month.
PHOTO FEATURE: Rohingya refugees march in the morning at Jamtoli camp at Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh, on January 22, 2018. REUTERS / Mohammad Ponir Hossain
But more than 20 people on a list of potential candidates for return, presented by Bangladesh, told Reuters that they will refuse to return to northern Rakhine State, where they fled. Bangladesh said it would not force anyone to do it.
The United Nations also said conditions were not yet in place for their return, in part because Buddhists in Myanmar were protesting repatriation.
"It will depend on the other country, whether it happens or not," said Win Myat Aye, Myanmar's Minister of Social Welfare and Resettlement, at a press conference in Yangon on Sunday. .
"But we must be ready on our side. We did it. "
Abul Kalam, Bangladesh's Commissioner for Relief and Repatriation, said he hoped the process could begin on Thursday.
"The return will be voluntary. No one will be forced to return, "he told Reuters.
Countries agreed in mid-November to begin repatriating some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who had fled the large-scale military crackdown in Myanmar last year.
According to them, local soldiers and Buddhists massacred families, burned hundreds of villages and perpetrated gang rapes. United States investigators accused the army of intention of "genocide" and ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar denies almost all allegations, saying that security forces are fighting terrorists. Attacks by Rohingya insurgents calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army preceded the crackdown.
Myanmar recognizes the killing of 10 Rohingya by security forces in the village of Inn Dinn. Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were sentenced to seven years in prison earlier this year for allegedly breaking the country's official secrets law after covering the massacre.
Reuters said the court's decision was flawed and the lawyers of both appealed their conviction.
Win Myat Aye said that preparations had been made for 2,251 people to be transported Thursday to two transit centers, while a second group of 2,095 people could follow later by road.
Once processed by the authorities, they would be sent to another center where they would be housed, fed and invited to build houses through cash-for-work programs.
Returnees would only be allowed to travel in Maungdaw Township, one of the three that they fled, and only if they accepted national verification cards, a piece of identity. that most Rohingya reject because they call them foreigners.
Many Rohingya, the majority of whom have remained stateless after decades of persecution, oppose the return without guarantee of citizenship and freedom of movement.
Additional report by Thu Thu Aung in Yangon; edited by Mike Collett-White
