TEKNAF: A Myanmar government team visited Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh on Thursday as part of a mooted pilot repatriation scheme.

Most of the refugees have been stuck in ramshackle camps in south-eastern Bangladesh since fleeing a 2017 crackdown by the Myanmar military that is now subject to a United Nations genocide investigation.

Several previous repatriation attempts have failed but Bangladesh and Myanmar are looking to return around 1,100 people to the violence-wracked state of Rakhine in the coming weeks.

Twenty Rohingya visited two resettlement camps this month in Rakhine, where the Myanmar junta plans to house them in what experts say is land that for generations belonged to the Rohingyas before being confiscated.

The team of 14 Myanmar officials, all in civilian clothes, arrived by boat in the Bangladeshi border town of Teknaf on Thursday morning, went to the camps and talked to around 200 people.

But Mohammad Selim, one of the Rohingya who met the Myanmar delegation, said by phone that their demands were being ignored.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2023