Instead, they will
be called 'displaced persons from Rakhine state,' a Bangladeshi official says.
Bangladesh has
agreed to a request from Myanmar officials to replace the words “Myanmar
nationals” with “displaced persons from Rakhine state” on identity cards issued
to Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, a Bangladeshi official told BenarNews, and
an RFA-affiliated online news site.
Dhaka agreed to the
change during meetings this weekend in Myanmar between Bangladesh Foreign
Minister AH Mahmood Ali and Kyaw Tint Swe, the minister of Myanmar’s State
Counselor’s Office.
A high-profile
delegation led by Ali on Saturday toured Maungdaw township in Myanmar’s Rakhine
State, the site of last year’s military crackdown that prompted one of the
world’s worst refugee crises in decades.
“While discussing
the repatriation issues at the ministerial meeting, Myanmar raised objection
about the words used in the identity card we issued for the Rohingya now living
in Cox’s Bazar,” a member of the Bangladeshi delegation told BenarNews on
condition of anonymity.
Myanmar emphasized
during the meeting that in line with an agreement signed in Naypyidaw on Nov.
23, 2017, the people who fled to Bangladesh from Rakhine “are not Myanmar
citizens, but they used to live in Rakhine,” the source said.
“We listened to
them, and agreed to change the identity of those living in Cox’s Bazar as
‘displaced persons from Rakhine state,’” he said. He did not make it clear when
Dhaka would issue the new cards reflecting the agreed changes.
Nor was it clear how
the decision would affect a joint effort announced in June by U.N. and
Bangladeshi officials to issue new ID cards to all Rohingya refugees older than
12 after verifying their identities.
Refugees
demand safety guarantees
Rohingya leaders
expressed concerns that Myanmar’s latest move could “obliterate” their
historical rights.
“We are Rohingya. We
are Myanmar nationals. We do not belong to Bangladesh,” Mohammad Afzal, a
leader of Balukhali refugee camp, told BenarNews in a phone interview.
“Bangladesh has refrained from calling us Rohingya because of Myanmar’s
objection. Now, they won’t call us Myanmar nationals?”
Buddhist-majority
Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
Humayun Kabir, a
former ambassador and vice president of private think-tank Bangladesh
Enterprise Institute told BenarNews that Naypyitaw’s demand for Dhaka to drop
the word “Myanmar national” from the Rohingya ID cards seeks to “bring
uniformity in the nomenclature officially used by Bangladesh and Myanmar.”
“This is not a big
issue,” he said. “The most important issue is safe and sustainable repatriation
of the Rohingya.”
Ali and his
delegation visited the villages to verify Myanmar’s preparation for the planned
repatriation of the Rohingya refugees, about 700,000 of who fled to
southeastern Bangladesh starting a year ago as a result of a military campaign
that the United States and the United Nations have condemned as ethnic
cleansing.
The crackdown
followed attacks by Rohingya insurgents on police outposts in August 2017.
The refugees live in
rudimentary shelters on tree-stripped hills in southeastern Cox’s Bazar
district, joining about 400,000 others who had fled earlier waves of violence
in Myanmar.
Although Bangladesh
and Myanmar formally agreed almost nine months ago to work together to start
repatriation, no Rohingya have officially returned. Rohingya leaders have told
BenarNews in previous interviews that they do not intend to go back until their
safety is guaranteed.
Source: BenarNews