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Myanmar-Rohingya Talks Yield No Progress on Repatriation, Refugees Say

Mohammed Idris Abdullah

   COX'S BAZAR, BANGLADESH - Two days of meetings between a team of
   Myanmar government representatives and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
   camps have not yielded progress on repatriation, several participants
   say.

   Myanmar's government and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
   (ASEAN) sent delegations to meetings Wednesday and Thursday in
   southeastern Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district. But the representatives
   offered no new incentive for Rohingyas to return to their homes in
   Myanmar's Rakhine state, said Mohammad Zubair, a central member of the
   Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, an advocacy group.

   Speaking separately at the first Global Refugee Forum in Geneva on
   Wednesday, Myanmar diplomat Ei Ei Tin offered a more optimistic view of
   the issue. She said her government is "ready to receive the returnees
   and confident that, with the concerted efforts of all stakeholders and
   cooperation of the international community, we can start repatriation
   process in the near future and practical and sustainable solution can
   also be achieved."

   Zubair, who lives in Lambashia camp within the sprawling Kutupalong
   megacamp in Cox's Bazar, represented the rights group at a meeting with
   the visiting delegation Wednesday in Kutupalong.

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