No Rohingya turn up for repatriation to Myanmar

TEKNAF, Bangladesh: A fresh push to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar fall flat on Thursday, with no one turning up to hop on five buses and 10 trucks laid on by Bangladesh.

Members of the Muslim minority, 740,000 of whom fled a military offensive in 2017, are refusing to return without guarantees for their safety and a promise that they will at last be given citizenship by Myanmar. "The Myanmar government raped us, and killed us. So we need security. Without security we will never go back," Rohingya leader Nosima said in a statement.

"We need a real guarantee of citizenship, security and promise of original homelands," said Mohammed Islam, a Rohingya from Camp 26, one of a string of sites in southeast Bangladesh that are home to around a million people. "So we must talk with the Myanmar government about this before repatriation." The vehicles provided to transport the first batch out of 3,450 earmarked for return turned up at 9:00 am (0300 GMT) at the camp in Teknaf.