The Rohingya will also have to provide the names of family members along with previous addresses in Myanmar, birth dates, and a statement of voluntary return.
And there are very few, if any, people left in their villages anyway, many of them razed.Įnjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Officials in Myanmar, including State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, are well aware that many Rohingya will struggle to meet these conditions given that they simply don’t have the paperwork, or lost their documents while fleeing the military onslaught. Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific. Such documents include national verification cards, the non-current “white cards” and receipts received for the return of “white cards.” But there are doubts over how well such a system would work.
The deal was made on the back of a 1992-1993 agreement where Myanmar would accept those who could present identity documents issued to the Rohingya by previous governments. Naypyidaw does not recognize Rohingya and calls them “Bengali” –- implying they are from Bangladesh despite having lived in Myanmar previously. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas have fled Rakhine state in northern Myanmar since a violent military crackdown was sparked by a militant attack on police posts in August. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson backed a previous United Nations finding and said “after a careful and thorough analysis of available facts” the violence in targeting the Muslim Rohingya qualified as ethnic cleansing. But repatriations are expected to begin within two months, with a memorandum of understanding signed just one day after U.S. The deal is tentative, and specifics remain unclear. Though the deal has some serious limitations and will likely do very little to ease the overall crisis, it could not have come sooner and will save the Pope and his entourage from the Vatican from potentially messy diplomatic encounters when he starts a visit of both countries this week. Last week, Myanmar and Bangladesh said they had reached a deal for the repatriation of about 600,000 Rohingya refugees.