Myanmar team visits Cox’s Bazar for Rohingya repatriation project

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A delegation from Myanmar is visiting Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh this week to verify a few hundred potential returnees for a pilot repatriation project.

A Bangladeshi official said on Wednesday it was unclear when the mainly Muslim refugees would be going home.

Nearly a million Rohingya are living in camps in Bangladesh in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, told Reuters news agency there was a list of 1,140 Rohingya who are to be repatriated under the pilot project, of which 711 have had their cases cleared.

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Cases for the remaining 429 on the list, including some newborns, were still being processed.

“We are ready” to send them back, Rahman said, adding he did not know when that could begin.

So far, Myanmar’s military government, which took power in a coup two years ago, has shown little inclination to take back Rohingya refugees.

China’s ambassador to Bangladesh Yao Wen hoped the first batch of displaced Rohingya would be repatriated soon while Beijing continued its role as mediator, the official Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news agency reported.

Crammed in tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheets, refugees’ living conditions in the camps are dangerous.