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Rohingya Muslims need citizenship and basic rights from Myanmar and Asean should make it happen, experts say
- The region’s leaders issued a joint statement last week but held back from making demands of Myanmar in the repatriation of Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh
- But Asean needs to have ‘difficult conversations’ to make their return possible, experts at a conference in Malaysia said
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Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh refugee camps will not return to Myanmar willingly unless they get citizenship and basic rights – and while the onus is on Myanmar to provide these, Asean and the international community must help make it happen, experts at a conference in Malaysia said on Tuesday.
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Lilianne Fan, who chairs the Asia-Pacific Refugee Rights Network’s Rohingya Working Group, said that the refugees “don’t want to go back without any protection” of their rights to property, freedom of movement and citizenship. “Citizenship is the only thing that will give them protection,” she said.
Addressing a panel on the refugee crisis at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia’s 33rd Asia-Pacific Roundtable, Fan said it was up to the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to have “difficult conversations” if they wanted to “really shift the willingness of the Rohingya to return”.
“There has to be more,” she said.
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At last week’s Asean summit, the region’s leaders issued a joint statement stressing their continued support for the “voluntary return of displaced persons in a safe, secure and dignified manner”, but held back from making demands of Myanmar, which has been criticised for failing to ensure the safe repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims forced into Bangladesh.
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