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Paving way for the return of over 6 lakh Rohingya refugees, Bangladesh on Thursday said it has inked a deal with the Myanmar government to facilitate repatriation of Muslim minorities.
Updated : Nov 23, 2017, 07:06 PM IST
Paving way for the return of over 6 lakh Rohingya refugees, Bangladesh on Thursday said it has inked a deal with the Myanmar government to facilitate repatriation of Muslim minorities.
Around 620,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August when the Myanmar military began its crackdown against alleged militants.
The two countries arrived at the agreement following talks between Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Bangladesh's Foreign Minister A H Mahmood Ali, and after weeks of tussling over the terms of repatriation.
Bangladesh, in a brief statement, said they had agreed to start returning the refugees to mainly Buddhist Myanmar in two months.
A working group would be set up within three weeks to agree the arrangements for the repatriation, it said.
"This is a primary step. (They) will take back (Rohingya). Now we have to start working," Ali told reporters in Naypyidaw.
However, it remains unclear how many Rohingya will be allowed back and how long the process will take.
Rights groups have raised concerns about the process, including where the minority will be resettled after hundreds of their villages were razed, and how their safety will be ensured.
The stateless Rohingya have been the target of communal violence and anti-Muslim sentiment in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for years.
They have also been systematically oppressed by the government, which stripped the minority of citizenship and severely restricts their movement, as well as their access to basic services.
Tensions erupted into bouts of bloodshed in 2012 that pushed more than 100,000 Rohingya into grim displacement camps.
Nearly 620,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar this year for neighbouring Bangladesh, driven out by a military operation in Rakhine State following attacks on police posts on August 25. The military crackdown against the Rohingya has triggered a major refugee crisis and escalating global outrage.
The UN has called the mass exodus of the Bengali-origin Muslim minorities a textbook case of “ethnic cleansing”.
Human rights bodies have over the last week issued reports accusing Myanmar security forces of slitting the throats of Rohingya, burning victims alive and gang-raping women and girls.
Both civilian and military leadership of Myanmar deny allegations.
The United States on Wednesday also toughened its stance on Myanmar, accusing the country's security forces of perpetrating "horrendous atrocities" against the Rohingya that amount to "ethnic cleansing" of the Muslim minority.
The statement from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who visited Myanmar last week, is the strongest US condemnation yet of the crisis.
After a careful and thorough analysis of available facts, it is clear that the situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya," Tillerson said in a statement.
"No provocation can justify the horrendous atrocities that have ensued."
(With agencies)