There is no progress on starting the repatriation of forcibly displaced Rohingya people from Bangladesh as the Myanmar authorities have kept the Rakhine region restive.

The government there is not creating an atmosphere conducive to Rohingya return in Rakhine in violation of its commitments made to various bilateral, regional and international platforms.

‘We could not start the repatriation of Rohingya community members as the Myanmar government has not created an environment conducive to their return. Instead, they have kept the region tense,’ foreign minister AK Abdul Momen said on Friday.

‘The Myanmar military has announced a ceasefire in all areas amid the COVID-19 pandemic except Rakhine where they brought thousands of military troops,’ Momen told New Age over phone.

Violence is going on in the region. The world is somehow very quiet (about the situation in Rakhine), he added

Bangladesh has been hosting more than 1.1 million Rohingya people for years.

Two attempts to launch the repatriation have, meanwhile, failed since the signing of agreements with Myanmar over two and a half years ago on their return home in Rakhine.

Over 7,00,000 Rohingya people have crossed the border to Bangladesh in the last influx that began on August 25, 2017 amid atrocities of the Myanmar military against the Rohingya people.

Asked about the observance of World Refugee Day on Saturday by the international community, the minister said that a good number of rich countries were engaged in tall talks on the questions of upholding the human rights (of the Rohingya people).

(But) at the same time they are pursuing double standards for maintaining their business interests in Myanmar, he added. ‘Most of the western countries have substantially increased their investment in Myanmar.’

Japan topped the list of foreign investors with more than 36 per cent of the overall investment in Myanmar in 2018–2019, and China, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Austria, Taiwan, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands have also good amount of investments in Myanmar, according to Mizzima, a newspaper published from Yangon.

In their last meeting with the Rohingya representatives in Cox’s Bazar in October 2019, the Myanmar officials declined to accept major demands from the Rohingyas, including assuring them of citizenship before the physical repatriation began, for encouraging them to voluntarily go back to Rakhine.

Myanmar has been going dead-slow in clearing, for taking back, Rohingya people from the lists presented by the Bangladesh authorities since early 2018.

The country has allowed only 30,000 Rohingya people from lists of about 5,90,000 members of the community till Friday.

A tripartite arrangement, made at the initiative of China, involving Bangladesh and Myanmar, is yet to produce anything substantive on ensuring repatriation of the Rohingya people.

The Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development and the Progressive Voice on Friday called upon the Myanmar authorities to create enabling conditions for the safe and sustainable repatriation of the refugees.

They suggested that Myanmar should take concrete steps to address the root causes of the conflict, which entail ending the ongoing military offensives, removing military personnel from ethnic areas as a priority and holding the Myanmar military to account for human rights violations.

They also demanded that the ASEAN must hold Myanmar to account for its role in creating a regional refugee crisis, one that could be meaningfully resolved through determined ASEAN actions.

Nearly 80 million women, children and men around the world have been forced from their homes as refugees or internally displaced people, UN secretary general António Guterres said in a message on World Refugee Day.