Rohingya say no to going back to Myanmar to live in more camps, after years in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has hosted more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims in refugee camps after they fled persecution from the Buddhist-majority Myanmar

Myanmar’s military authorities are looking at a trial repatriation of around 1,100 people that would apparently involve more camps, for months on end

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A Rohingya delegation who live in Bangladesh but are from Myanmar briefly visited their nation on May 5, as part of efforts to revive a long-stalled plan to allow the stateless minority to go home. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:05pm, 8 May 2023Updated: 10:34pm, 8 May 2023

Rohingya Muslims living in crowded Bangladeshi refugee camps say they will not return to Myanmar only to become stuck again in camps offered by the military authorities.

“Returning to Myanmar without ensuring citizenship rights would make us unsafe again,” said Mohammad Rahimullah, a Rohingya man who recently visited Myanmar to see resettlement arrangements made by Myanmar as part of an effort to repatriate refugees from Bangladesh.

He said Rohingya Muslims do not want to get confined in yet more camps back in Myanmar.

“We want to go back to our land, to our villages,” he said, adding that they were told that the Rohingya would have to stay in camps for at least five months before they could go home. “It is hard to believe that we would be transferred to our villages from the camps.”

Bangladesh has been hosting more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims in squalid camps after they fled persecution in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Nearly 750,000 of them crossed the border in the face of a military crackdown on the minority group in 2017.

Both nations have been engaged in consultations since then for safe and voluntary repatriation. Previous efforts for Rohingya to return failed twice, in 2018 and 2019, amid the refugees’ lack of trust in Myanmar’s military government.