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NEWS - Bangladesh Fails to Force Ro
- Subject: NEWS - Bangladesh Fails to Force Ro
- From: Rangoonp@xxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 22:31:00
Subject: NEWS - Bangladesh Fails to Force Rohingyas Year-End Return
NOTE: This so-called problem wouldn't exist if the military regime
wasn't Forcibly controlling the region.
Bangladesh Fails to Force Rohingyas Year-End Return
Inter Press Service
30-JUL-99
DHAKA, (Jul. 30) IPS - Repatriation of the remaining
21,000
Burmese refugees in Bangladesh has become uncertain
after visiting Foreign Minister U Win Aung refused to
give his
hosts a concrete assurance during his recent three-day
visit.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad had told
his Burmese counterpart that Bangladesh was expecting to
have all the refugees leave the country by the end of
December this year.
Instead the Burmese foreign minister left July 19
expressing
the hope that the matter would be resolved after his
return
home. He told reporters in Dhaka, on his departure, "I
shall
do my best. I will talk to relevant ministries on my
return."
That however was just not good enough for a piqued
government which has told the Burmese commerce minister
who was scheduled to visit Dhaka, from August 3 to 7, to
postpone his visit, though ministry officials have denied
the
connection.
Burma is committed to taking back the refugees, but
continues to resist any attempt to make it time-bound.
A quarter million Rohingya, indigenous people who are
mainly Muslims, had trekked into Bangladesh in 1991 to
escape persecution by the Buddhist military junta in
Rangoon. The Rohingyas were put up in makeshift camps in
the Cox's Bazar area bordering Burma.
After many rounds of talks between the two governments
and following international pressure, Rangoon agreed to
repatriate its citizens, much to Dhaka's relief.
By the middle of 1997, repatriation of 230,000 refugees
was
completed under the supervision of the United Nations
High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) when the remaining
said they would not go back because of their uncertain
future in Burma.
The minority Rohingyas who are from Burma's hilly
northern
border province of Arakan have fled religious
persecution,
forced labor, arbitrary and punitive taxation and the
confiscation of their lands by the Burmese military
government.
The military regime also has been accused of working on a
program of population engineering, moving Buddhist Arakan
families into "model villages" in areas from where the
Muslims have been forced out.
Under Burma's 1982 Citizenship Law, which was
promulgated shortly after Rohingya refugees returned from
the 1978 exodus to Bangladesh, a person in order to
become a citizen has to prove residency in Burma back to
1823.
Few Rohingyas qualify as either full, associate or
naturalized
citizens (the three categories created by the law) which
is
essential in Burma to gain access to basic social,
educational and health services.
Of those still in Cox's Bazar, some 6,000 have been
cleared
by the Burmese authorities for repatriation, while 9,000
were
rejected as they could not prove their address in Burma
and
the remaining, Rangoon dismissed as armed cadre of the
rebel Rohingya Solidarity Organization.
Bangladeshi authorities however blame the refugees for
continuing to staying on in two remaining camps in Cox's
Bazar, beyond the deadline of Aug. 15, 1997, set by
Rangoon, in the mistaken hope that Bangladesh would give
them permanent residence.
Rohingyas are ethnic cousins of people living in the
Cox's
Bazar area, and they share a religion and customs, and
even
their dialects are broadly similar.
Consequently, the government has had to watch its step
domestically, particularly from religious groups, which
lambasted the government for the deaths of half a dozen
Rohingyas in 1997 in clashes with the law enforcing
agencies in the two remaining refugee camps in Cox's
Bazar.
Dhaka-based political observers say the Sheikh Hasina
Wajed government was counting on speeding up the
repatriation process with the visit of the Burmese
foreign
minister. Since November 1998, Burma's has been accepting
only 50 refugees a week - a repatriation process that
could
take nine years to be completed.
Meanwhile, new refugees from Burma continue to cross over
into Bangladesh, UNHCR admits although it is not willing
to
guess the numbers with many landing up to stay in the
refugee camps with friends and relatives and sharing
their
rations.
UNHCR has been blamed by the Bangladesh government, in
the past, for encouraging refugees to refuse to go back
to
Burma.
A Human Rights Watch and Refugees International report on
the Rohingya refugees, 'The Search for a Lasting
Solution',
quoted a Bangladesh foreign ministry statement released
on
July 25, 1997, saying, "The refugees are predominantly
economic migrants and any generous subsidizes and
campaigns about local settlement will work as a
disincentive
for the refugees to return.
The government says the influx of refugees has created
many socio-economic, political and environmental
problems.
Refugees are accused of stripping the forests around
Cox's
Bazar, defecating anywhere and everywhere, and taking
away the jobs of locals, among a string of charges.
As long as they are considered non-citizens and unwelcome
in Burma, Bangladesh's Rohingya refugee problem will
remain.