Bangladesh proposes UN-led verification for Rohingya return

Bangladesh has proposed to the international community a United Nations-led screening process of Myanmar nationals who have fled violence in Rakhine State and taken shelter in Cox’s Bazar.

Nurul Islam Hasibbdnews24.com
Published : 26 Sept 2017, 05:20 PM
Updated : 26 Sept 2017, 05:20 PM

It has floated the idea after Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a statement on Sept 19 said her country is ready to take back their nationals after verification.

Some 480,000 Rohingyas took shelter in Bangladesh in a month to escape violent crackdown in what the UN has described as ‘ethnic cleansing’. Over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have already been living in Bangladesh for decades.

Suu Kyi, who is heavily criticised for not doing enough to stop the military attacks on the civilians in the Rakhine State, skipped the just held UN General Assembly where international community condemned the atrocities and wanted action to stop the violence.

The Nobel Peace laureate said on Sep 19 they were prepared to start the verification process at any time, in her first address since the start of the latest military crackdown in Rakhine on Aug 25.

Burma’s representative at the UN said they are ‘reaching out Bangladesh’ on the issue.

A senior official at the foreign ministry told bdnews24.com that Minister of the Office of State Counselor Kyaw Tint Swe might come to Bangladesh next week.

“The date has not been finalised,” the official said, adding that they would insist on his going to the Cox’s Bazar to see the plight of the Rohingya refugees.

But Suu Kyi’s statement has raised a question: How these people who were forcibly displaced from the Rakhine State and took shelter inside Bangladesh will be verified.

Diplomats said there are international processes to verify the citizenship, but those are mostly related to the people who have citizenships.

Rohingyas are stateless as Burma is denying their citizenship for decades.

“We are proposing a UN-led verification process,” a foreign ministry official who cannot be named told bdnews24.com.

Suu Kyi, however, said the verification criteria will be based on principles agreed to in 1992 when the two countries inked an agreement based on which Burma took back nearly 250,000 Rohingyas as ‘members of Myanmar society’.

bdnews24.com saw the text of that agreement, article IV of which mentioned the criteria on how to verify them.

At that time, the Myanmar government agreed to repatriate in batches all persons: “carrying Myanmar citizenship identity cards/ national registration cards, those able to present any other documents issued by relevant Myanmar authorities and all those persons able to furnish evidence of their residence in Myanmar, such as addresses or any other relevant particulars”.

The Myanmar government in a spirit of “cooperation” agreed to accept after scrutiny all those people who took shelter in Bangladesh and whose presence had been “recorded through Refugee registration cards” issued by the government of Bangladesh.

A diplomat who visited Rohingya refugee camps told bdnews24.com that “it is unlikely that they hold any cards issued by Burmese authorities”.

“They just ran for safety,” the diplomat said, adding that the Burmese government cancelled all the papers they used to hold a year ago.

The diplomat, however, said “still there could be some processes international community can set” and that Burmese authorities have all the documents related to Rohingyas.

The Bangladesh government has started biometric registration of the newly arrived Rohingyas, a process that the UN refugee agency UNHCR said would eventually help “to exercise the right to return when the time is right”.

Meanwhile, a Japanese delegation led by a vice-minister is scheduled to arrive in Dhaka on Tuesday night to see the Rohingya plight in Cox’s Bazar.

They will have a breakfast meeting with State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam and Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque on Wednesday morning.