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A senior Myanmar official said on Wednesday that his country would take over a first group of 2,000 Rohingya refugees from camps in Bangladesh in November, despite widespread doubts about the proposal.
Officials from both countries announced Tuesday that some of the 720,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled a deadly military crackdown in the predominantly Buddhist country last year would start returning next month.
Myanmar Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Myint Thu visited Cox Bazaar on Wednesday to discuss repatriations with refugees.
Most of the repeated requests are to give them Myanmar nationality with all their rights before they return.
Thu said Myanmar had checked 5,000 names on a list of 8,032 Rohingya sent by the Bangladeshi authorities in February.
"Of these 5,000 people, the first batch will be around 2,000 people, and then a second batch will follow, so we will receive the first batch in mid-November," Thu told reporters.
Officials from Bangladesh said a new list of 24,342 Rohingya names had been handed out during this week's negotiations.
But Rohingya representatives have expressed strong doubts about the return despite this announcement.
"We would prefer to die in the camp of Bangladesh, we will not return without any guarantee of citizenship or full restoration of rights," Abdul Hakim, a refugee from Rakhine State, told AFP. Myanmar.
The United Nations, aid groups and even the Bangladeshi authorities have stated that any repatriation must be voluntary.
Rachael Reilly, Oxfam spokesman, said the refugees "want justice done and the violence and discrimination that brought about the crisis to end".
"It is extremely worrying that the Rohingyas are being sent back to Myanmar to face the same persecution that they have fled," she said.
The 720,000 people have joined the estimated 300,000 people who fled the violence that took place in Myanmar, where Rohingya citizenship and rights are denied Many have told poignant stories of rape, assassination and death. 39, village fires.
Investigators said Myanmar's top military officials should be prosecuted for genocide, but Myanmar dismissed the calls, insisting that it targeted only militants.
The two neighbors first announced a large-scale repatriation plan in November 2017. But it has not advanced, with each government blaming the other.
The State Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Myanmar visited Wednesday in the Cox & B Bazar camps to discuss the repatriation of refugees.
