Arakan News Agency
Myanmar officials said on Wednesday they had only been able to verify 374 Rohingya Muslim refugees for their repatriation, accusing neighboring Bangladesh of failing to provide correct information about the refugees.
About 700,000 Rohingya people fled Myanmar after attacks by security forces on August 25, prompting the United Nations and the United States to say they were ethnically cleansed.
Myint Thu, a permanent secretary of Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry, said officials examined the documents handed over by Bangladesh in February to 8,320 refugees and found only 374 eligible for repatriation in the first batch. “They can go back when it suits them.”
It was not clear whether 374 persons had agreed to return to Myanmar.
Officials have argued that Myanmar could not confirm whether the rest of the refugees had previously lived in the country, because some documents do not include fingerprints and individual images.
Bangladeshi officials have expressed doubts about Myanmar’s willingness to repatriate the Rohingya refugees.
Abu al-Kalam, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and rehabilitation commissioner, said he could not comment in detail because he had not yet received Myanmar’s response. But he wondered how more than 300 people could be verified if the wording of the documents was wrong.
