The U.S. State Department is urging
Myanmar and Bangladesh to develop a long-term solution to deal with
thousands of Rohingya refugees, including providing food and basic
healthcare to the stateless people.
Thursday, September 13th 2012, 12:00 AM
The United States on Thursday urged Bangladesh to keep its border
open to Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar in the wake of June violence
but advocated their safe repatriation as a long-term solution.
A
delegation of the U.S. State Department recently visited the troubled
region in Myanmar where violence between Rakhaine Buddhists and Rohingya
Muslims in June left at least 80 people dead. The team later visited
refugee camps of Rohingya in Bangladesh's southern Cox's Bazar district.
U.S. officials said at a news conference in Dhaka that the situation in Myanmar was still grave for the Rohingya people.
They
urged both Myanmar and Bangladesh to work out a long-term solution
while stressed the need for providing food and basic healthcare to
stateless Rohingya.
Dan W. Mozena praised Bangladesh for its years
of support to the Rohingya people but urged the country to do more for
tens of thousands of undocumented Rohingya in Bangladesh.
Mozena,
who did not visit Myanmar but went with the full delegation to the camps
in Bangladesh, said the situation was "grim" among refugees outside the
official camps who were deprived of basic needs.
Some 28,000
Rohingya refugees live in two official camps in Cox's Bazar district,
but tens of thousands of others languish outside without proper care or
facilities.
The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina earlier
this year asked three international organizations to stop providing
services to undocumented Rohingya to discourage fresh refugees from
Myanmar. The government says it needs to take precautions because it has
intelligence reports that some Islamic militant groups have targeted
the Rohingya refugees for recruitment.
The U.S. officials were
concerned about the situation of Rohingya people in Myanmar, said one of
the delegation who visited there, Kelly Clements, deputy assistant
secretary for Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
Clements
said displacement of Rohingya people was still rampant in the troubled
region, where many homes were burned to the ground during the violence.
But she praised Myanmar for allowing them "unprecedented access" to see
the area.
She said reconciliation and reintegration of the ethnic groups should top Myanmar's government agenda to resolve the crisis.
She said both Bangladesh and Myanmar should ensure basic assistance to the people in trouble.
The U.S. officials also pushed for continuous dialogue between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Myanmar
considers the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and
denies them citizenship. Bangladesh says Rohingya have been living in
Myanmar for centuries and should be recognized there as citizens.
In the 1990s, about 250,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh in the face of alleged persecution by the military junta.
Later, Myanmar took back most of them, leaving some 28,000 in two camps run by the government and the United Nations.
Bangladesh
has been unsuccessfully negotiating with Myanmar for years to send them
back and, in the meantime, tens of thousands of others have entered
Bangladesh illegally in recent years.
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