Bangladesh hands Myanmar list of 230,000 more Rohingya refugees for repatriation

The government has handed a list of 230,000 more Rohingya refugees to Myanmar for repatriation to their homeland in Rakhine State.

Delwar Hossain, the director general of the foreign ministry’s Myanmar wing, said on Tuesday that he gave the list to the Myanmar ambassador in Dhaka on Monday.

In six phases, including the latest one, Bangladesh has handed lists of 830,000 Rohingya to Myanmar, which has verified only 42,000 refugees, but the repatriation has not begun.

More than 700,000 Rohingya crossed the border into Bangladesh after a 2017 crackdown by the Myanmar military, taking the number of refugees in Bangladesh past 1 million.

Bangladesh later signed an agreement with Myanmar for the repatriation of its displaced nationals, but the process to send them back was halted twice as the Muslim refugees refused to return without citizenship rights in the Buddhist-majority country.

Bangladesh has alleged a lack of sincerity of Myanmar in ensuring safe, dignified and sustainable return of the refugees as violence in Rakhine has continued.