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Foreign Minister. AK Abdul Momen said that the long-awaited tripartite meeting between Bangladesh, China and Myanmar on the repatriation of Rohingya will be held on January 19 in Dhaka. He told reporters this while attending the South Dhara Poush Utsav (Winter Festival) in Lalmatia on Wednesday (January 13).
The minister said: ‘This year’s meeting will be (tripartite) at the secretary level. We have kept our expectations very high (on positive results). The tripartite meeting was scheduled for this week. However, the meeting was postponed to January 19 due to the Chinese foreign minister’s visit to Myanmar.
He added that representatives from China and Myanmar would be in Dhaka for a meeting with Bangladesh.
Earlier, China assured Bangladesh that it would take steps to organize a second round of trilateral foreign minister-level talks on the repatriation of Rohingya after Myanmar’s general elections last November.
The first tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Bangladesh, China and Myanmar was held in 2019 during the session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Dr. Momen said that so far, Bangladesh has released biometric data of 840,000 Rohingya who have been forcibly displaced to the Myanmar authorities. Previously, we provided around 7 lakhs of biometric data, last day we provided biometric data to 230,000 Rohingya.
Expressing his frustration, the minister said that Myanmar authorities have so far only verified 42,000 of the 7.4 lakh of biometric data. “It is unfortunate … (Myanmar) has a great insincerity,” he added.
When asked if he was optimistic about the start of repatriation after the Dhaka tripartite meeting, the minister said that Dhaka was always optimistic about the repatriation of Rohingya.
“We are doing our part, but our neighbors are not cooperating.”
The foreign minister reiterated that the only solution to the Rohingya crisis was repatriation. There is no alternative to repatriation.
Bangladesh has sheltered 1.1 million (11 lakh) forcibly displaced Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar district. Most of them have arrived in Myanmar since the military operation on August 25, 2016. The United Nations and other human rights groups have called it a “textbook example of genocide” and a “genocide”.
In the past three years, Myanmar has not recovered a single Rohingya. The process of repatriation of the Rohingya has been hampered twice due to a lack of confidence in the safety of the Rohingya in their homeland in Rakhine State.
ARA
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