Myanmar says more than 300,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are verified former Rakhine residents eligible to return. The offer remains contingent on security in Rakhine, where conflict and mistrust still block repatriation.
Myanmar’s military-backed government said on Saturday that more than 300,000 Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh are former residents of western Rakhine state, and that it will accept their return once security conditions improve. The statement came as the Rohingya refugee crisis entered its ninth year, with hundreds of thousands still in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing Myanmar in August 2017.
Myanmar said it had verified 426,545 of the 828,824 refugees on a list provided by Bangladesh by the end of July, and found that 308,797 of those verified were former residents of Rakhine. It said it would continue working with Bangladesh to receive verified former residents when the security situation in Rakhine becomes more stable.
The 2017 military operation followed attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group on guard posts in Rakhine. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border into Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands of others who had already been living there for decades after earlier waves of violence by Myanmar’s military. The scale, organisation and ferocity of the operation led to allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide from the international community, including the UN.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, does not recognise the Rohingya as one of the country’s 135 lawful ethnic minorities. Instead, it refers to them as Bengalis, implying that they are from Bangladesh and are illegally settled in Myanmar. In its latest statement, the foreign ministry said 113,507 people could not be verified, while 4,241 were found to have been involved in what it called terrorist activities.
The ministry also rejected claims that more than 1 million people were displaced from Rakhine. It said more than 540,000 people crossed into Bangladesh after the 2017 violence, while more than 200,000 remained in northern Rakhine. Myanmar and Bangladesh had agreed to a two-year repatriation process in 2018, but conditions in Myanmar worsened after the military seized power in 2021 and ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, triggering widespread armed resistance. Efforts to repatriate refugees have not succeeded.
Fighting between the Rakhine-based Arakan Army and the military over control of the region in 2023 forced more refugees to flee towards Bangladesh and elsewhere. The Arakan Army now controls much of Rakhine after taking territory from the military in recent years. At the same time, poor conditions in refugee camps, sharp cuts in foreign aid and the lack of safe prospects for return have pushed more Rohingya to attempt dangerous sea journeys to Malaysia and Indonesia on fragile boats.
In late July, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Myanmar had agreed to take back 5,000 Rohingya refugees currently in Malaysia under a repatriation programme. However, Myanmar foreign ministry official Han Win Aung told The Associated Press at the time that the programme was limited to verified Myanmar nationals held in detention centres in Malaysia, and rejected reports that the government would accept Rohingya. Overall, Myanmar’s latest statement repeated its position that verified former residents can return, but only when security in Rakhine improves.
With PTI Inputs
