The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Dhaka

Visiting United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said here yesterday that the Commission has been working to reestablish the trilateral process to send back the remaining 27,000 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar.

"We are working to find out a solution through which the Rohingya refugees could be sent back to Myanmar," Guterres told reporters after talks with Foreign Affairs Adviser Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury at the state guesthouse Padma yesterday afternoon.

Guterres, former Portuguese prime minister, said the Commission has been trying to create a situation so the refugees voluntarily leave the camps and are accepted by the Myanmar authority.

He said it was not good to be a refugee in any circumstances.

They must live with dignity in their own homeland, he observed.

Asked whether the Commission was trying to relocate them in a third country, the UN refugee chief said Canada has already taken a good number of refugees. "So far Canada is the largest recipient of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh," he added.

He said many developed countries like the United States and Australia and some European countries accepted refugees.

"It is absolutely false," he said when his attention was drawn to allegations that some vested quarters and NGOs were preventing the refugees to leave Bangladesh. "We will act and act strongly if there are elements of truth in such allegations," Guterres stated.

"We are here to send them (refugees) not to reestablish them. We are not working for local integration," he added. "Our objective is to create a condition to return them to their country of origin," he emphatically said.

The UNHCR high commissioner, who arrived here yesterday on a two-day visit to see for himself the plight of the refugees, lauded the role of the Bangladesh government, the generous people and the administration for looking after the Rohingya refugees.

Dr Iftekhar said he had fruitful discussions with the UNHCR high commissioner. "Our intention is to resolve the issue once and for all. We discussed how to persuade Myanmar to take back their citizens."

Regarding the visit of Antonio Guterres, the foreign adviser said "We wanted that the high commissioner makes an on-the-spot visit to see for himself the situation." He expressed the hope that the issue would be resolved soon.

Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar's northern Rakhine state in the early 1990s. Through trilateral arrangements, most of the refugees went back to Myanmar while another 27,000 have been living in refugee camps in Cox's Bazar and Bandarban for more than 16 years.