December 19, 2019
Diplomatic Correspondent
Myanmar-Asean team urges refugees
A joint delegation of Myanmar and the Asean yesterday met a group of some 40 Rohingya representatives to convince them to return to Rakhine, from where they fled a brutal military crackdown in 2017.
The 15-member delegation includes nine officials from Myanmar and six officials from the Emergency Response and Assessment team of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
This was the first visit by a Myanmar delegation after the hearing at International Court of Justice held from December 10-12 in The Hague. The Gambia accused Myanmar of genocide against Rohingya people in the ICJ.
Chan Aye, director-general of the International Organisations and Economic Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Myanmar, led the delegation that arrived in Dhaka Tuesday night and then flew to Cox’s Bazar yesterday morning.
The officials held talks with the Rohingya representatives at camp-4 in Ukhia from 2:00pm-4:30pm and told them that the situation in Rakhine was good, said Bangladesh officials.
“The Rohingya representatives told the delegation clearly that they wanted a guarantee of citizenship in Myanmar and the presence of international security force in Rakhine. They said they won’t accept the National Verification Card,” an official told The Daily Star.
The demands are similar to the ones made by the Rohingyas when Myanmar delegations visited the camps on two occasions in the last two years, he said.
Some 750,000 Rohingyas fled Rakhine since August 2017 and took shelter in the squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar. The refugees joined 300,000 other Rohingyas who had fled earlier waves of violence in Rakhine since the 80s.
“The visit by the delegation after the ICJ is a positive development. The Rohingyas are their people and they should convince them to return,” said a foreign ministry official.
No comments:
Post a Comment