Arakan News Agency
A three-member Myanmar delegation of the Advisory Commission on Arakan State arrives in Dhaka to hold discussions with Bangladesh authorities over the Rohingya issue.
The delegation will also visit shelters where Rohingyas from Myanmar took shelter to escape a “counter-insurgency operation” in the country by its military.
Diplomatic sources said the delegation, during its four-day stay in Bangladesh, would visit two Rohingya shelters in Cox’s Bazar to witness the plight of 65,000 Rohingya refugees who entered Bangladesh recently and joined thousands of others who had done the same years ago.
The Myanmar government established the Advisory Commission on Arakan State, also known as Rakhine Commission, to discover lasting solutions to complex and delicate issues in the Arakan State.
In another development, sources at the foreign ministry and the UN office in Dhaka said the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, will arrive in Bangladesh near the end of February to visit shelters in Bangladesh where the Myanmar nationals took shelter amid persecution, killing, rape and ethnic cleansing in their homeland.
The nine-member Advisory Commission, composed of three international and six national persons of eminence, is Myanmar’s national initiative to resolve protracted issues in the region. The commission is chaired by former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan.
According to the foreign ministry sources, the delegation members are Win Mra, chair of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission; Aye Lwin, core member and founder of Religious for Peace Myanmar; and Ghassan Salame’, former Lebanese minister of culture (2000- 2003) and UN special advisor to the secretary-general (2003-2006).
