Junta officials visit Arakan State transit camps for Muslim refugees amid familiar talk of repatriation

08 Feb 2023

DMG Newsroom
8 February 2023, Sittwe

Myanmar’s junta regime is pushing ahead with the repatriation of Muslims who fled from northern Arakan State’s Maungdaw to Bangladesh during the military’s so-called counter-insurgency operations in 2017.

Junta officials inspected transit camps in Taungpyo Letwae, Ngakhuya and Hla Poe Kaung in northern Maungdaw Township on Tuesday, according to Maungdaw residents.

“We don’t know when the repatriation will start. Junta officials left the camps by helicopter around 5 p.m. yesterday,” a resident of Kyeekanpyin Village told DMG.

Regime officials that visited the transit camps included the junta’s international cooperation minister U Ko Ko Hlaing, border affairs minister Lieutenant-General Tun Tun Naung, and social welfare, relief and resettlement minister Dr. Thet Thet Khaing.

 The ministers reportedly instructed local authorities to make the transit camps ready to receive the Muslim refugees. The regime is having damaged houses repaired at the Hla Poe Kaung transit camp, said a Maungdaw resident.

“Soldiers went to the Hla Poe Kaung transit camp along with labourers and building materials. I saw them carrying damaged tin from the camp. Daw Thet Thet Khaing also inspected those camps. They are doing so for the repatriation of Muslims that fled to Bangladesh,” he said.

DMG was unable to obtain comment from Maungdaw Township administrator U Kan Tun Aung and Arakan State Administration Council spokesman U Hla Thein.

“The regime is talking about repatriation as it is faced with a crisis and its image has suffered on the international stage,” said Arakanese politician U Pe Than. “The regime is repatriating not because of international pressures. But it is doing this for its own interests as the international community also wants to see repatriation.”

The National League for Democracy (NLD) government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi made multiple abortive attempts to repatriate Muslims from Bangladesh during its five-year term from 2016-2021.

More than 700,000 Muslims fled to neighbouring Bangladesh when the Myanmar military carried out “clearance operations” following the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s attacks on several police outposts in 2017.

The United Nations’ human rights chief at the time described the military’s actions as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” while others in the international community have called it genocide, including Bangladesh’s former foreign minister and the US secretary of state.