DHAKA: Bangladeshi diplomats and analysts have expressed skepticism over a statement on Saturday by Myanmar’s National Security Adviser Thaung Tun that his country is willing take back all 700,000 Rohingya refugees if they return voluntarily.
Rohingya refugees have also expressed skepticism over his statement: “If you can send back 700,000 on a voluntary basis, we are willing to receive them.”
Muhib Ulla, a refugee in Kutupalang camp in Bangladesh, said: “We want to go back, but before that Myanmar authorities should ensure our citizenship of the country. They have to allow us free movement.”
Refugee Selim Mollah said: “We don’t want any more camp life after going back to Rakhine state, and our livelihoods should be guaranteed.”
Former Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Shomsher Mobin Chowdhury said the world has not seen any evidence of Myanmar’s sincerity regarding repatriation.
“They’re making this type of statement because of diplomatic pressure from other countries,” he told Arab News.
Bangladesh should refer Myanmar’s persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority to the International Criminal Court (ICC), he said.
Imtiaj Ahmed, a professor of international relations at Dhaka University, concurred that Myanmar is only making such a statement due to international pressure.
Skepticism over Myanmar’s stated willingness to repatriate Rohingya
Skepticism over Myanmar’s stated willingness to repatriate Rohingya
- Rohingya refugees have also expressed skepticism over the statement
- Former Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Shomsher Mobin Chowdhury said the world has not seen any evidence of Myanmar’s sincerity
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
