Arakan Watch: Cox’s Bazar, March 15, 2023:
A team of 22-member delegation from Burma/Myanmar has arrived in Teknaf of southern cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh to verify the information of Rohingyas enlisted for repatriation.
On Wednesday at around 9:45am Bangladesh time, the Burmese/Myanmar delegates arrived in Teknaf’s Chowdhurypara transit jetty, which is led by the foreign ministry’s regional district for Maungdaw. The delegation team was welcomed by the Mr. Mohammad Shamsud Douza, additional refugee relief and repatriation commissioner of Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC) in Teknaf in order to cooperate on the repatriation of the Burmese Rohingya people to their original land with due rights, safety and dignity.
There are 429 Rohingya genocide survivors were enlisted for the repatration whom would be verified by Burmese/Myanmar delegation team, while both of the counter parts will work on gathering information and documentation of children recently born in the camps, confirmed by refugee relief and repatriation commissioner Mizanur Rahman.
Sources from the RRRC office said Bangladesh has sent a list of over 800,000 Rohingyas for repatriation. Information of 1,140 Rohingya from the list were primarily verified. Burmese/Myanmar agreed to repatriate 711 Rohingya but objected to another 429. The new delegation has arrived in Bangladesh to verify the information of those 429 Rohingya people.
The delegation members were verifying the information at Malancha auditorium of Teknaf land port, which might take six days to complete the information of the 429 Rohingyas. Information of only 65 people will be verified on the first day on Wednesday, they added.
The number of enlisted Rohingya people in 33 camps in Ukhia and Teknaf in Cox’s Bzar is over 1.25 million. Of them, 800,000 arrived after 25 August 2017.
Bangladesh government could not repatriate not even one Rohingya person in the last five and a half years to Arakan/Rakhine State of Burma/Myanmar, their country of origin. The Rohingyas staying in camps at different times demanded that they would not return to Myanmar until they are given citizen status.
Notably mention here that the Rohingya are the bona-fide citizen of Burma’s Arakan State, which were occupied by Burman King in the year 1784. Since then, the Rohingya are being persecuted in order to expel out them from their ancestral homeland. Of which the latest effort of genocidal actions were done in the name of clearing operation in the year 2017 through unimaginable brutalities. #
