DHAKA has handed over the second list of 22,432 Rohingya refugees to Myanmar for return to their homeland Rakhine State, Bangladesh foreign secretary said on Saturday. To accelerate the repatriation process of the Rohingyas, Bangladesh also sought the support of the United Nations. Since August 2017, there is no visible development in repatriation process of the most persecuted people of the world to their ancestral land despite Bangladesh and Myanmar had signed a deal for Rohingya repatriation. The number of refugees given in the second repatriation list is a negligible figure in comparison to vast presence of Rohingya people.
It’s clear that, the attitude of Naypyidaw in this regard is not as positive at all when they directly declined the citizenship rights of Rohingyas. Undoubtedly, the persecution of Rohingya is a part of the blueprint of military-backed Myanmar government; so the world must mount pressure on them to retain the citizenship of Rohingya people along with their political and social rights.
Myanmar government informed that Rohingyas would be kept for 2-3 days in the transit camps near to their respective township on their return and are likely to be given National Verification Card initially for identification. About 7,00,000 Rohingyas, mostly women, children and aged people, entered Bangladesh after fleeing murder, arson and rape during ‘security operations’ by Myanmar military in Rakhine State, what the UN denounced as ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’ and genocide. The Rohingya influx started on August 25 last year and the number of undocumented Myanmar nationals and registered refugees in Bangladesh now stands at about 11,16,000.
We must say, the global leaders cannot avoid their responsibilities for letting Myanmar committing genocide against the Muslim minority. The terms genocide, persecution, mass killing, state hatred have become known to the generations of this century for the organized crimes-such as genocide in Myanmar; where entire humanity is symbolically violated. The dissent opinions among permanent member states of the UN using their veto power apparently support the oppressors in Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and many other parts of the world.
Bangladesh will have to stir up global attention, particularly Muslim countries and the Western world, to increase pressure on Myanmar to take back their expelled citizens as soon as possible.
