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Rohingyas demand role in repatriation negotiation

Refugee group sends letter to UNSC


| Updated: September 04, 2018 19:51:08


Reuters file photo used for representational purpose Reuters file photo used for representational purpose

A platform of Rohingya has placed several demands, including "direct, meaningful and sustained consultation" with the refugees in the repatriation process.

In a letter to the UN Security Council (UNSC), the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights has also demanded recognition of their status as Rohingya, guarantees of non-reprisal, closure of internally displaced persons camps, free access to Rakhine State by media, human rights groups and to national verification cards.

Ambassador Karel J.G. van Oosterom, Permanent Representative of the Netherlands, forwarded the letter written by the platform.

"No decisions about our future should be taken without our input. If any repatriation process is to be voluntary, then we cannot be excluded from it," said the letter.

"No agreement, including the memorandum of understanding between Burma and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees/United Nations Development Programme, can be effective or credible if it is forged without our consent," the letter noted.

One year after our ethnic cleansing, Burma has still not shut down its internally displaced persons camps.

A total of 128,000 people (the vast majority of them Rohingya) remain interned in state-run camps.

The exodus of refugees from Burma into Bangladesh continues, because conditions inside Burma have not improved - on the contrary, "conditions have only gotten worse," according to the letter.

"Burma's government will never voluntarily create the conditions necessary for the return of the Rohingya. Despite its attempts at window-dressing reform, it has taken no steps to address the root causes of the Rohingya crisis," said the letter.

On the contrary, the government refuses to grant the Rohingya citizenship, or even recognise the term "Rohingya".

State authorities thwart a "legitimate international effort" to bring war criminals to account and deliver the justice that victims deserve.

"Indeed, we have no confidence in our government's so-called "Commission of Enquiry", the sixth such mechanism created by Aung San Suu Kyi's government to date. Like the numerous mechanisms before it, this, too, is designed only to delay and distract."

About the National Verification Cards, it said, for generations, identification documents have been used to institutionalise the Rohingya's secondary status as non-citizens.

Burma's use of national verification cards is "a veiled attempt to deny our equality and dignity as Burmese nationals - and it must end," insisted the letter.

But Myanmar raised objection to consider this a document.

Permanent Representative of Myanmar Hau Do Suan wrote a letter to the UNSC you in response to the same dated 23 August 2018 from the Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the United Nations.

"I wish to register my government's strong objection to and serious concern over treating a letter from a non-government entity of questionable character and status as a document of the Security Council," Mr Suan said.

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