Rohingya crisis: Bangladesh, Myanmar agree on joint panel to repatriate refugees

Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to form a joint panel for repatriation of Rohingya refugees.

Officials of the two countries met in Bangladesh's capital of Dhaka on Monday to discuss the crisis amid mounting international pressure.
 
The Myanmar delegation was led by Minister for the Office of the State Counsellor of Myanmar Kyaw Tint Swe. The Bangladeshi delegation included Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali and Home Minister Asaduzzaman Kamal.
 
"Myanmar has proposed taking back the Rohingya refugees. We have agreed on forming a joint working group to oversee the repatriation process," Minister Ali told the media in Dhaka after the talks.

Bangladesh proposed signing a bilateral agreement for the repatriation process and handed over a draft to the Myanmar delegation, he added.

Asked when the process might start, Ali said: "One meeting cannot solve all the issues. The joint working group has to be formed first. Both sides will propose names. We are moving it fast."

His reply to how long it would take to form the joint panel was: "Very soon."

Over half a million Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since the start of a military crackdown in the Myanmar border state of Rakhine.

The refugees have claimed the Myanmar security forces are shooting at civilians, setting fire to their homes and raping Rohingya women.

Myanmar’s de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to restoring democracy to the country, sent the minister of her office to Bangladesh amid international pressure over the crisis.

Despite her party's win in the 2015 elections, the Myanmar Army controls the majority of the government, including the defence authorities.

A woman is helped by a child as Rohingya refugees arrive by a wooden boat from Myanmar to the shore of Shah Porir Dwip, in Teknaf, near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, October 1, 2017. Reuters

The exodus of 507,000 Rohingyas since late August has been described as the world's fastest-developing refugee crisis by the United Nations, which says Buddhist-majority Myanmar is engaging in the ethnic cleansing of its Rohingya Muslim minority.

Myanmar denies that. It says its forces are battling Rohingya "terrorists" who triggered the latest wave of violence with coordinated attacks on the security forces on Aug 25.

It says more than 500 people have been killed since, most of them insurgents, whom it has accused of attacking civilians and setting most of the fires that have reduced to ashes over half of the more than 400 Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine.