Myanmar team visits Cox’s Bazar for Rohingya repatriation project

Myanmar delegation is visiting camps this week to confirm a couple of hundred potential returnees for the mission.

Almost 1,000,000 Rohingya live in camps in Bangladesh within the border district of Cox's Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 [File: Ed Jones/AFP]

A delegation from Myanmar is visiting Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh this week to confirm a couple of hundred potential returnees for a pilot repatriation mission.

A Bangladeshi official mentioned on Wednesday it was unclear when the primarily Muslim refugees can be going dwelling.

Almost 1,000,000 Rohingya live in camps in Bangladesh within the border district of Cox’s Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

Bangladesh’s refugee reduction and repatriation commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, advised Reuters information company there was an inventory of 1,140 Rohingya who're to be repatriated underneath the pilot mission, of which 711 have had their circumstances cleared.

Circumstances for the remaining 429 on the checklist, together with some newborns, have been nonetheless being processed.

“We're prepared” to ship them again, Rahman mentioned, including he didn't know when that would start.

To this point, Myanmar’s navy authorities, which took energy in a coup two years in the past, has proven little inclination to take again Rohingya refugees.

China’s ambassador to Bangladesh Yao Wen hoped the primary batch of displaced Rohingya can be repatriated quickly whereas Beijing continued its position as mediator, the official Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha information company reported.

Crammed in tens of hundreds of huts manufactured from bamboo and skinny plastic sheets, refugees’ residing circumstances within the camps are harmful.

Two years in the past, a large blaze within the camp killed no less than 15 folks and destroyed greater than 10,000 houses. One other hearth earlier this month left 12,000 folks with out shelter.

Other than longstanding issues resembling the dearth of employment and academic alternatives, the camps additionally endure from surging crime.

Determined to seek out someplace higher, many Rohingya have risked their lives making the hazardous sea voyage from Bangladesh to nations resembling Malaysia and Indonesia.

Based on the United Nations estimates, no less than 348 Rohingya are thought to have died at sea final 12 months.