Myanmar to accept over 3 lakh verified Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh

Myanmar's military-backed government said on Saturday, 15 August 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 ministry of foreign affairs' statement comes as the Rohingya refugee crisis enters its ninth year, with hundreds of thousands of refugees still living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing Myanmar in August 2017, when the military launched a crackdown following attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group on security posts in Rakhine.

The operation drove more than 700,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands of others who had already been living there for decades after fleeing previous waves of violence perpetrated by Myanmar's military.

The scale, organisation and ferocity of the operation led to accusations 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 officially recognised ethnic minorities. It instead refers to them as Bengalis, implying that they are from Bangladesh and have illegally settled in Myanmar.

Myanmar said it had verified 426,545 of the 828,824 refugees on a list provided by Bangladesh as of the end of July, and determined that 308,797 of those verified were former residents of Rakhine.

The ministry of foreign affairs said 113,507 people could not be verified, while 4,241 were found to have been involved in what it called terrorist activities.

The statement said Myanmar would continue working with Bangladesh to receive verified former residents when the security situation in Rakhine becomes more stable.

The ministry also rejected claims that more than 1 million people were displaced from Rakhine, saying more than 540,000 people crossed into Bangladesh after the violence in 2017, while more than 200,000 remained in northern Rakhine.

Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to a two-year repatriation process in 2018. However, security in Myanmar deteriorated further following the military takeover in 2021 that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and triggered widespread armed resistance. Repeated plans to repatriate the refugees have failed to materialise.

The renewed chaos brought about by fighting between the Rakhine-based ethnic Arakan Army and the military over control of the region in 2023 forced more refugees to flee towards Bangladesh and elsewhere in a desperate bid to save their lives. The Arakan Army now controls much of Rakhine after capturing territory from the military in recent years.

In recent years, poor conditions in refugee camps, steep cuts to foreign aid and the lack of safe prospects for returning to Myanmar have led increasing numbers of Rohingya refugees to attempt the dangerous sea journey to Malaysia and Indonesia on rickety boats.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said in late July that Myanmar had agreed to take back 5,000 Rohingya refugees currently living in Malaysia as part of a repatriation programme.

However, Myanmar foreign ministry official Han Win Aung told Associated Press at the time that the repatriation programme was focused solely on verified Myanmar nationals currently held in detention centres in Malaysia and rejected reports that the government would accept Rohingya.

With AP/PTI inputs