UNHCR team meets officials to resume return of Rohingya refugees

A high-level team of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) held talks with Home Minister Rafiqul Islam yesterday on the resumption of repatriation of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

The four-member team led by Francois Fouinat, director of Asia and Pacific, met the Home Minister and high officials at the Secretariat to discuss how to resume the repatriation process, stalled in July last year after rioting by some refugees declining to return.

The UNHCR team is meeting foreign ministers and Relief Ministry officials today.

Earlier, the team arrived in Cox's Bazar from Myanmar on Sunday after holding talks with Myanmar officials. UNHCR officials declined to comment on the outcome of the team's Myanmar visit. Nor would they disclose anything on yesterday's meeting at Home Ministry.

Some 20,750 Rohingyas are living at Nayapara and Kutupalong camps in Cox's Bazar, the remains of about 250,000 Rohingyas, the ethnic Arakanese Muslims who fled to escape persecution back home in 1992.

Most refugees have gone home under the auspices of the UNHCR. But extremist elements seized control of two camps where refugees rioted staging demonstrations, declining to go back last year before expiry of clearance for 7,000 refugees eligible to return by July.

"We have discussed the issues related to repatriation of the remaining refugees. We want them to go back. We have urged the UNHCR to help negotiate with the Myanmar authorities to resume the repatriation, revalidating the clearence of the 7,000 and the remaining others," one official preferring anonymity told The Daily Star after the talks.

The UNHCR officials visited the two camps at Nayapara and Kutupalong on Sunday and held talks with local officials.