A 22-member delegation from Myanmar has reached Teknaf upazila of Cox's Bazar to observe the preparations for the repatriation of Rohingyas, local news reports said. They reportedly arrived at Teknaf Jetty Ghat by speed boat across the Naf River after 10 am on March 15  from Maungdaw Township in Rakhine State, Myanmar. Officials of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Office as well as Border Guard Bangladesh and law enforcement personnel welcomed them.

The delegation will verify the list of Rohingyas willing to return to Myanmar. They will also visit Rohingya camps, local officials said. More than 1,000 Rohingya could be taken back under family-based repatriation initially, including hundreds of Rohingyas from the Hindu communities.

A list of 862,000 Rohingyas were previously given to Myanmar by the Bangladesh government. After verifying this list provided by Bangladesh, Myanmar announced it would take back about 70,000 of them. Bangladesh, which hosts over 1.2 million Rohingya refugees who fled a brutal crackdown by Myanmar's army in Rakhine State in 2017, has long been urging the international community to pressurize Myanmar to speed up the repatriation process.

Beijing-mediated negotiations

However, fresh possibilities are arising for the Rohingya repatriation process. According to news reports that were published in the Bangladeshi dailies, Myanmar has suddenly taken initiatives to repatriate the Rohingyas. Eight diplomatic missions stationed in Yangon were taken to Rakhine last week to be briefed on the repatriation operation. Diplomats from eleven nations, including from Bangladesh, India, and China and ASEAN, were among them.

Three years ago, Beijing-mediated negotiations on the family-based repatriation of Rohingya to particular communities got underway. However, the Covid outbreak and the army's takeover of power in Myanmar caused the repatriation of the Rohingya to stop. Questions about the true motivation behind this recent flurry of activity are now being raised. Right now, the situation in Rakhine State is not reported to be good. A few months ago, the insurgent Arakan Army was involved in a bloody conflict with Myanmar's military regime. China is said to be pushing for repatriation, even if it happens on a modest scale. China, a close ally of Myanmar, helped mediate a pilot scheme to begin the sustainable repatriation of a small number of Rohingya to start with.

Under this effort, two lists of 711 Muslim and 317 Hindu Rohingya were sent in October 2021. The fact that neither party made a firm decision in this area caused the entire process to stall. The issue of returning Rohingyas to Rakhine through the trial initiative, however, came to light only last week. On Monday, a large number of the Rohingyas on that list spoke with the camp manager about returning home.

Burden on Bangladesh

The Rohingya minority has traditionally been considered illegal immigrants by the majority Buddhists in Myanmar. and were the targets of religious persecution by state-sponsored militias. The Rohingya were thereafter subjected to horrendous slaughter and ethnic cleansing as a result. 

Therefore, The Gambia, a western African nation, stepped in to help with the humanitarian disaster, accusing the government of Myanmar of violating the Genocide Convention on the grounds of "obligation erga omnes," and submitting a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019. On the merits of the case, the ICJ announced a "procedural order" that included an immediate halt to all atrocities committed by the Myanmar state against the Rohingya people.

This enormous project in Bangladesh has resulted in the construction of 34 refugee camps in the Cox's Bazar district's Ukhia and Teknaf areas which, according to OCHA (the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), sheltered some 943,000 stateless Rohingya in October 2022.

Besides Cox's Bazar, about 20,000 refugees have been to Bhasan Char island and according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). 

This vast population cannot be supported or housed by Bangladesh alone. To assist Bangladesh in efficiently addressing the Rohingya crisis, the international world needed to shoulder some of the responsibility, even though their recent attention had shifted to Europe due to the Ukraine war. All types of organized crime, including drug trafficking, extremism, and terrorist acts, are allegedly being committed by internal crime syndicates. Although Bangladesh's law enforcement agencies are making unrelenting efforts to put a stop to criminal actions, these activities are posing a major security risk for the country.

Has international pressure worked?

Acting under international pressure, Myanmar has apparently made the decision to reintegrate persecuted Rohingya based on nationality verification - with the repatriated Rohingya being referred to as "Bengali foreigners" - under the active supervision of international organizations and China, the United States, and EU countries.

The Rohingya problem in Bangladesh should be thoroughly resolved with assistance from the international community. To establish a lasting and effective solution, close collaboration between international organizations, NGOs, and Dhaka is imperative with the best interests of the Rohingya in mind. However, it is also important to keep up diplomatic and humanitarian assistance operations to take the gigantic repatriation mission to its logical conclusion. 

(The author is a Dhaka-based independent researcher and columnist on South Asian affairs. Views are personal. He can be reached at sufiansiddique1971@gmail.com)