Diplomats visit Muslim IDP camp, refugee reception centres in Arakan State

By Admin 02 Sep 2023

DMG Newsroom
2 September 2023, Sittwe

The heads of several foreign diplomatic missions in Myanmar recently visited Muslim camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in the Arakan State capital Sittwe and refugee reception centres in Maungdaw.

The diplomats arrived in Arakan State on Friday and visited some Muslim villages and the Thakkelpyin IDP camp in Sittwe.

A member of the Thakkelpyin camp management committee, U Hla Shwe, said: “They said they would work for us to return to our original homes, and gain citizenship.”

The Muslim IDPs face various difficulties living at the camp, and they must be allowed to return to their original settlements and granted freedom of movement, U Hla Shwe added.

The camp shelters more than 3,000 Muslims who were forced from their homes in Sittwe’s Setyonesu Ward following the intercommunal violence that wracked Arakan State in 2012.

The diplomats visited the Taungpyo Letwe and Hla Poe Kaung reception centres in northern Maungdaw on Saturday.

“I heard that the heads of diplomatic missions visited the Taungpyo Letwe and Hla Poe Kaung reception centres. But they didn’t come to the Nga Khu Ya reception centre,” said the administrator of Nga Khu Ya Village, U Zaw Win Aung.

During the meeting with foreign diplomats, secretary of Arakan State military council U Kyaw Thu Zaw explained measures taken by the Myanmar side to bring back Muslims from Bangladesh in line with a memorandum of understanding signed with Dhaka, according to the regime.

The junta said it has arranged to initially bring back more than 1,000 Hindu and Muslim people from Bangladesh. But it has yet to announce a specific date for the repatriation.

Politician U Aung Thaung Shwe said he doubts any Muslims will be systematically brought back to Myanmar any time soon.

“The National League for Democracy government also took diplomats there and explained about repatriation. But nothing happened. The regime is doing the same. There is nothing special about it,” he told DMG.

“It is concerned with Arakanese people. The Arakan Army now has control over large areas of Arakan State and also enjoys popular support. So, I think the repatriation will only take place after consulting with the AA,” said U Aung Thaung Shwe.

More than 700,000 Muslims fled to Bangladesh when the Myanmar military carried out brutal so-called “area clearance operations” in the aftermath of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s attacks on multiple border guard police outposts in 2017.