After visiting Maungdaw town in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, two Rohingya leaders on Friday expressed their desire to return to their homeland if they are granted citizenship and have the liberty to live freely.
"We want to return to our own land, but not live in camps built on our land. We must be granted citizenship and have our land returned to us," said a Rohingya community leader Mohammad Sufiyan while talking to journalists at the Teknaf-Myanmar transit jetty.
The Rohingya leaders said they were not satisfied with the conditions in the villages, although the situation in Maungdaw city has somewhat improved.
However, Refugee, Relief, and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, also the leader of the 27-member delegation team that went to Rakhine State, assured that the situation in Maungdaw city and villages has improved significantly.
"Most Rohingyas are working and moving freely in Maungdaw city," he said.
Stating that the Rohingya issue is long-standing and cannot be resolved overnight, Mizanur Rahman said Bangladesh wishes to repatriate Rohingyas in a dignified and voluntary manner.
Dhaka TribuneThe 27-member delegation, including 20 Rohingya leaders and seven government officials, returned to Teknaf, Cox's Bazar, after inspecting the conditions for repatriation in Rakhine State.
They arrived at the Teknaf-Myanmar transit jetty at 6pm on Friday.
The delegation, including three women in the group, traveled to Myanmar on Friday morning for the first time to monitor whether a supportive environment has been created for repatriation.
Previously, on March 15, a 17-member Myanmar government delegation arrived in Bangladesh to verify and process the list of Rohingyas provided by Bangladesh for repatriation.
The delegation directly spoke to 486 Rohingyas from 147 families sheltered in Bangladesh, recording their statements.
They returned to Myanmar on March 22.
At that time, it was requested that Rohingyas be allowed to visit Rakhine to personally observe the overall environment before repatriation.
In line with this request, the Rohingya delegation visited Rakhine on Friday.
Since August 25, 2017, Bangladesh has been hosting over 1.2 million forcibly displaced Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar, most of whom arrived there after a military crackdown by Myanmar, which the UN has called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing" and other rights groups have dubbed "genocide.
