The Myanmar government has invited a delegation of its minority Muslim community to Rakhine state for the first time in nearly six years after the Rohingya people fled to Bangladesh in 2017.
A 20-member Rohingya delegation with Bangladeshi officials is scheduled to visit Maungdaw in Rakhine next Friday to check whether the environment in Rakhine is favourable for repatriation.
Keeping the issue of Rohingya repatriation for the first phase in mind, the delegation will visit Rakhine, diplomatic sources have said.
Mediated by China, a tripartite meeting between Bangladesh and Myanmar was held in Kunming on 18 April.
According to diplomatic sources, a decision was made in the meeting that Bangladesh officials will go to Rakhine next Friday with Rohingya representatives to see whether the environment is favourable for beginning the repatriation this month.
Another delegation from Myanmar will come to Cox's Bazar to talk to the Rohingyas within a week after the visit by Bangladesh side. China and Myanmar want to start repatriating the first group of 1,176 Rohingyas this month if everything goes well.
Six years have already elapsed since the Rohingya people fled a military crackdown in Myanmar and took shelter in Bangladesh. The repatriation could not be executed even after finalising the dates twice. Rohingyas could not be convinced for repatriation, particularly due to lack of supportive environment for repatriation in Rakhine and Myanmar's goodwill.
Myanmar is suddenly set to begin repatriating Rohingyas at a time when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has set a deadline for placing counterarguments in its genocide case against the country. Myanmar is scheduled to submit its official statement to the ICJ on 24 May.
Apart from this, preparations are underway with western countries to present a new proposal to the UN General Assembly on the Rohingya issue in June. As a result, international relations analysts termed this latest initiative of Myanmar's Rohingya repatriation with the help of China as a step to ease global pressure.
Diplomatic sources say China has been stressing for Rohingya repatriation for months amid mounting international pressure on Myanmar's military junta.
China's special envoy Deng Xijun visited Myanmar in December last year. He visited Dhaka and met foreign minister AK Abdul Momen and foreign secretary Masud Bin Momen earlier last month.
Notably China, Myanmar and Bangladesh have made such visits public in the media in the past, but this time quite the opposite happened. The visits of China's special envoy to Myanmar in December and Dhaka in April were kept low key. Both Myanmar and Bangladesh avoided media coverage of the Chinese envoy's visit.
However, after the visit of China's special envoy, in response to the question whether Rohingya repatriation will start soon or not, the foreign minister told reporters, "It cannot be guaranteed until the repatriation starts as the initiative was foiled twice before even after fixing dates. But we hope they will return their homes soon.”
According to diplomatic sources, the issue of Rohingya representatives visiting Rakhine has been discussed for several years, but Myanmar authorities never agreed to it. The country all of a sudden agreed to take Rohingya representatives to Rakhine. Questions remain, whether the interest shown by China and Myanmar to repatriate the Rohingya is credible. Despite the progress of the talks on repatriation, there are still differences of opinion between Bangladesh and Myanmar on some fundamental matters.
Differences linger
Although a tripartite meeting was held in Kunming last month, the three countries- Bangladesh, Myanmar and China joined for separate talks. Later the three countries sit together for discussion.
According to diplomatic sources, in the tripartite meeting, Bangladesh asked for the plan to repatriate the Rohingyas. Later, it was decided that 6,000 Rohingyas will be taken back to Rakhine by December in 5 phases, 1,200 people in each phase. The next meeting will be held in December to review the decisions made in the meeting.
However, despite the decision to repatriate 1,176 Rohingyas and take in another 6,000 Rohingyas in the Kunming meeting, there are still some unresolved differences between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
According to the repatriation agreement signed between Bangladesh and Myanmar, 1,500 Rohingya will be sent back, 300 per day, 5 days a week. But Myanmar now says that 150 Rohingyas can be taken back to Rakhine, 30 people a day, 5 days a week, due to lack of preparation. Meanwhile, Bangladesh says that according to the terms of the agreement, the Rohingyas must be taken back.
Incidentally, just three months after the influx of Rohingya people into Bangladesh in August 2017, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed with Myanmar for repatriation under the pressure of China.
At that time, the then foreign minister of China, Wang Yi, visited Bangladesh and Myanmar several times.
Despite China’s intervention, it was said that Bangladesh and Myanmar were trying to solve this problem bilaterally. Wang Yi was in Naypyidaw during the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on Rohingya repatriation on 23 November 2017.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data, there are currently 960,539 Rohingyas registered in Bangladesh. Among them, the number of Rohingyas registered earlier is 37,366.
Former foreign secretary and senior fellow at North South University's South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance, Shahidul Haque, told Prothom Alo that Bangladesh has always been working taking repatriation into consideration as the only solution to the Rohingya crisis.
Myanmar never had the sincerity with which Bangladesh has been working to resolve this crisis, he said adding Myanmar brought forth the repatriation issue at various times to divert attention from various international forums including the Security Council, ICJ.
The former foreign secretary said the question remains whether Myanmar has the will given their past records.
As a result, Bangladesh should advance with caution as to whether the proposal made by Myanmar to start repatriation of Rohingya this month could be a sham, Shahidul Haque added.
*This report, originally appeared in Prothom Alo print edition, has been rewritten in English by Farjana Liakat