Bangladesh raising funds, delaying Rohingya repatriation: Myanmar

Myanmar has blamed Bangladesh for
delaying the start of a repatriation process
for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya
Muslim refugees, saying it feared Dhaka
could be stalling until it receives multi-
million dollars of international aid money.
More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled
predominantly Buddhist Myanmar to
neighboring Bangladesh since late August to
escape ethnic violence that accompanied a
brutal military counter-insurgency operation
after Rohingya militant attacks on security
posts in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
Zaw Htay, a spokesman for Myanmar’s de
facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said
Myanmar was ready to begin the repatriation
process any time, based along the lines of
an agreement that covered returns of
Rohingya to Myanmar in the early 1990s.
He said Bangladesh had yet to accept those
terms.
“We are ready to start, but the other side did
not accept yet, and the process was
delayed. This is the number one fact,” Zaw
Htay, director-general of the ministry of the
state counsellor’s office, told journalists on
Tuesday.
A memorandum of understanding on border
liaison posts was signed with Bangladesh
hme mnister Asaduzzaman Khan following
talks in the Myanmar capital, Naypyitaw, last
week, but there was no progress on reviving
the old agreement.
Zaw Htay linked the delay by Bangladesh to
the money raised so far by the international
community to help build gigantic refugee
camps for the Rohingya.
“Currently they have got $400 million. Over
their receipt of this amount, we are now
afraid of delaying the program of deporting
the refugees,” he said in comments carried
in a front-page article in the state-run Global
New Light of Myanmar newspaper on
Wednesday.
“They have got international subsidies. We
are now afraid they would have another
consideration as to repatriation,” he said.
The Bangladesh government issued a
statement on Thursday saying that Myanmar
had not agreed to 10 points put forward by
its minister at last week’s talks, including
the full implementation of the
recommendations of an Advisory
Commission on Rakhine State, chaired by
former UN scretary gneral Kofi Annan, for a
sustainable return of Rohingya.
Khan told Bangladesh media on Friday that
the two sides were unable to form a joint
working group but said it should be set up
by the time freign mnister Abul Hassan
Mahmood Ali goes to Myanmar for talks on
30 November.
The Myanmar government has said it would
accept the Rohingya once it was established
that they had lived in Myanmar.
Zaw Htay said Myanmar was awaiting a list
of Rohingya refugees from the Bangladesh
side.