Arakan News Agency
The reception centers, which will be used for receiving Rohingya refugees returning from neighboring Bangladesh, are in the final stages of completion before the Southeast Asian country begins repatriation within 20 days, an official with the Myanmar Ministry of Immigration said on Tuesday.
The centers in Taung Pyo Let Wae village have been completed, and the other in Nga Khu Ya village will be finished next week.
Myint Kyaing, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Labor, Immigration, and Population under Myanmar’s civilian-led government, told RFA.
Win Myat Aye, Myanmar’s minister of social welfare, relief, and resettlement, said previously that the country will begin accepting back Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh on Jan. 22.
Officials who will be tasked with checking the documents of Rohingya refugees, who voluntarily return to northern Arakan state, are in place, Myint Kyaing said.
“All groups that will check the returning refugees are ready,” he said. “We have sent the forms for the refugees to fill out, but we haven’t received any of the [completed] ones from Bangladesh yet.”
Rohingya refugees must be able to prove prior residency in Myanmar and show that they left after Oct. 9, 2016, to be readmitted to the country.
It remains unclear, however, whether any Rohingya refugees are willing to return to Arakan state, where many villages have been burned to the ground. Many of them have told United Nations investigators that they suffered rapes, killings, and other atrocities at the hands of the Myanmar army in what U.N. officials and some Western governments have called a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement on Nov. 23 to begin repatriating some of the 655,000 Rohingya who fled across the border from northern Arakan following a military crackdown targeting them in the aftermath of deadly attacks on police outposts by a militant group on Aug. 25, 2017.
Myanmar and Bangladesh — where about 1 million Rohingya refugees live, including 350,000-400,000 who fled previous waves of repression in Myanmar — agreed on Dec. 19 to form a working group to oversee the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees who are living in sprawling settlement camps in southeastern Bangladesh and to resettle them in northern Arakan state.
