Bangladesh: Bangladesh foreign minister A H Mahmood Ali talked to the senior representative of Myanmar Civil leader Aung San Suu Kyi. After an hour long meeting, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, said Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Monday to set up a “working group” to plan the repatriation of more than half a million Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled to Bangladesh to escape an army crackdown. He said, he and Myanmar official Kyaw Tint Swe had agreed in their talks to set up the working group to draw up plans for repatriation. However Myanmar sourced didn’t confirm it.
The United Nations has called the exodus of 507,000 Rohingya as the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency. It stated that Buddhist-majority Myanmar is engaging in ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya Muslim minority.
Both the neighbouring countries have agreed on repatriation plans before, but the fundamental problem—the status of Rohingya in Myanmar—remains unsettled. Apart from the 507000 Rohingya refugees, there were already about 300,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh before the latest exodus.