Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Sunday said that they had received positive response from Myanmar towards starting the Rohingya repatriation.
“We got some positive responses. We told them it’s an opportunity for you (Myanmar) to take back your nationals,” he said, referring to his recent correspondence with Myanmar international affairs minister Kyaw Tin.
The foreign minister said Myanmar has informed them about how many Rohingyas they would like to take back in the first batch of repatriation, likely to start soon.
“They (Myanmar) gave us a figure (of Rohingyas) to take back first,” he said.
“It’s a reasonable number (for the start) and we would like to see commencement of repartition,” he told reporters after attending a programme at Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP).
He did not disclose any number.
Bangladesh earlier handed over biometric data of 8,30,000 Rohingyas while the Myanmar authority so far verified only 42,000 displaced people out of the list.
The next round of tripartite director general (DG) level talks among Bangladesh, China and Myanmar to discuss the repatriation is scheduled to be held in the first week of February.
Kyaw Tin wrote back to Dr Momen following his letter on the new year’s eve.
In his letter, the Myanmar minister said his country is committed to take back Rohingyas under the agreement signed between Naypyidaw and Dhaka in 2017 regarding the repatriation of the forcefully displaced people from Bangladesh to Rakhine.
Besides, he said, Myanmar is sincere in peaceful coexistence and resolving bilateral issues with its neighboring countries, including Bangladesh, through mutual partnership.
Dr Momen and Kyaw Tin have good relations since both of them had served their respective countries as the permanent representative in the United Nations.
On January 19 last, a virtual secretary level tripartite meeting among Bangladesh, China and Myanmar was held to discuss commencing repatriation of Rohingyas.
After the meeting, Bangladesh foreign secretary Masud Bin Momen said Dhaka is ‘cautiously optimistic’ to start much-demanded Rohingya repatriation from 2nd quarter of this year as Naypyidaw showed its flexibility to take back their nationals during the tripartite talk.
Bangladesh is hosting over 1.1 million forcefully displaced Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar district and most of them arrived there since August 25, 2017 after a military crackdown by Myanmar, which the UN called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” by other rights groups.
In the last three years, Myanmar did not take back a single Rohingya while the attempts of repatriation failed twice due to trust deficit among the Rohingyas about their safety and security in the Rakhine state.
