DHAKA: Bangladesh on Sunday sought to reassure the international community that a planned repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to conflict-scarred western Myanmar would be “voluntary” and in coordination with the United Nations.
In a briefing to foreign diplomats, Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H Mahmood Ali insisted that the operation to return some 750,000 refugees who fled unrest and a military crackdown in Myanmar would involve the UN’s refugee agency.
“In order to ensure that the return is voluntary, Bangladesh has incorporated provisions for involvement of UNHCR and other relevant international organizations in the entire return process,” he said at the meeting in Dhaka.
Plans by Bangladesh and Myanmar to repatriate the refugees, who face desperate conditions in overcrowded camps near the countries’ shared border, are due to begin within days and last for two years.
But they have been met by angry protest among the Rohingya refugees, with many left traumatized by atrocities including murder, rape and arson attacks on their homes.
Rights groups and the UN have said any repatriations must be voluntary.
They have also expressed concerns about conditions in Myanmar, where many Rohingya settlements have been burned to the ground by soldiers and Buddhist mobs.
UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee is currently visiting the camps in southeastern Bangladesh where around a million of the Muslim minority are now living.
Ali said Bangladesh wanted to “ensure that the agreements facilitate safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return,” the minister said, according to a statement.
He said Myanmar would involve the Red Cross in the repatriation process, adding that it has agreed to allow India, China and Japan to help rebuild homes and villages in Rakhine.
Western diplomats attending the briefing emphasised safe conditions for the repatriation.
“The Rohingya that I have met in the camp do not want to go back to a situation that will be dangerous to them,” US ambassador to Bangladesh Marcia Bernicat told reporters after the briefing.
“They do not want to go back to uncertainty. And why would any of us want them to go back to uncertainty. Again the conditions have to be safe and acceptable,” she said.
The repatriation deal does not cover the estimated 200,000 Rohingya refugees who were living in Bangladesh prior to October 2016, driven out by previous rounds of communal violence and military operations.
Bangladesh says will coordinate with UN over Rohingya return
Bangladesh says will coordinate with UN over Rohingya return
Archbishop of York says he was ‘intimidated’ by Israeli militias during West Bank visit
- “We were … intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the archbishop said
LONDON: The Archbishop of York has revealed that he felt “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.
“We were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the Rev. Stephen Cottrell told his Christmas Day congregation at York Minster.
The archbishop added: “We have become — and really, I can think of no other way of putting it — we have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers, or just people who aren’t quite like us.
“We don’t seem to be able to see ourselves in them, and therefore we spurn our common humanity.”
He recounted how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with persecuted Palestinian communities in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood Nativity scene carving.
The carving depicted a “large gray wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus, he said.
He said it was sobering for him to see the wall in real life during his visit.
He continued: “But this Christmas morning here in York, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps most alarming, the ones we build around ourselves, the ones we construct in our hearts and minds, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers — the strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future — means that we are in danger of failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”
