Ensuring dignified return of Rohingyas

According to an agency report carried in this newspaper on Saturday refugees who visited Myanmar on Friday are not willing to return to their homeland. They went across the border to see the condition of the facilities meant to accommodate the repatriation of the stateless minority community.

Bangladesh is home to about a million Rohingya refugees, most of whom fled a 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar that is now subject to a UN genocide investigation.

The prevailing feeling among the refugees is that they want to return to the homesteads they were forced to abandon and come to Bangladesh, but not to any camps where their future would continue to remain uncertain. They want a dignified return which they are entitled to on ethical and legal grounds. And there is the omnipresent fear of fresh persecution in Myanmar. The United Nations has repeatedly said that that condition is far from ideal for the refugees to return. Questions have been raised from different quarters about the sincerity and intention of Naypyidaw regarding the issue.

On August 25, 2017, the Myanmar military carried out a massacre of the Rohingya population in Rakhine State. The Bangladesh government provides shelter to the Rohingya on humanitarian grounds. In the meantime, five years have passed; Myanmar is covering or trying to cover the issue of Rohingya repatriation under the cloak of various dramas. Myanmar has always tried to convince the international community that it is serious about taking back the Rohingya, but its actual steps have been full of drama. On November 23, 2017, a 19-point agreement was signed between the government of Bangladesh and Myanmar regarding the repatriation of Rohingya, but its practical reflection is still not visible.

Nearly six years have already passed since the incident of the massacre of Rohingyas in 2017. The carnage was described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Curiously the exact situation regarding Rakhine State is not being disclosed to the international community in Myanmar. At times, Myanmar has tried to divert the attention of the Rohingyas back to Rakhine State by favouring some organisations like ARSA or Arakan Army.

Even though members of the Muslim Rohingya population claim generations of roots in the country formerly known as Burma, Myanmar’s ruling generals have long promoted the xenophobic stereotype that they are “outsiders” in the Buddhist-majority country.

Bangladesh has gone out of its way to host around a million forcibly displaced Rohingyas The host country has done everything. It wants to ensure Rohingya return through peaceful means, but nothing has worked out so far. Voluntary repatriation of Rohingyas is the most sustainable and long-term solution to the situation. However, because of the Rohingyas’ lack of faith in the Myanmar government, repatriation attempts failed twice in November 2018 and August 2019.

The international community should have always taken the safe repatriation of refugees seriously. Bangladesh’s administration began diplomatic attempts to return them and negotiated agreements with Myanmar. It appears that Bangladesh is paying the price for expressing sympathy for a persecuted minority community in another country. Bangladesh wants to resolve the Rohingya situation through peaceful negotiations, and Myanmar and the international community should do the same. Myanmar has been attempting to mislead the international community to avoid fulfilling its duties for the repatriation and reintegration of the forcibly displaced Rohingyas.

Myanmar must ensure that Rohingya refugees are not persecuted upon their return to facilitate voluntary repatriations. To this aim, the international community and the United Nations should increase pressure on Myanmar to create a safe, secure, and dignified environment for the Rohingya refugees to return home. The international community should play a more assertive diplomatic role in pressuring Myanmar to return the Rohingyas.