Rohingya repatriation to start anytime, says Bangladeshi foreign secretary

Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Md. Shahidul Haque said on Sunday that the repatriation of Rohingya refugees would begin anytime as a fresh attempt by Dhaka and Nay Pyi Taw secured progress to start sending back the stateless ethnic people who were forced to leave their homes from Myanmar’s Rakhine state almost two years ago, reports Xinhua.

“We hope to start repatriating Rohingya people on a small scale anytime,” Haque told here journalists but did not elaborate.

Bangladesh last month handed over a fresh list of 25,000 Rohingya people to Myanmar as a delegation led by the country’s Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Myint Thu visited Dhaka.

Also for the first time the 19-member government delegation of Myanmar had then visited Rohingya camps in Bangladesh’s southeastern Cox’s Bazar district, some 292 km away of capital Dhaka, and talked to the Rohingya people.

Bangladesh in 2017 reached a deal with Myanmar to repatriate over 700,000 Rohingya who fled to neighboring Bangladesh.