B'desh Opposition party cast doubts on Rohingya repatriation pact

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has expressed doubts on the Rohingya repatriation pact.

The Bangladesh Foreign Ministry on Friday said that the Rohingya repatriation process will commence within two months'.

Earlier on Thursday, Bangladesh and Myanmar signed an memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Rohingya repatriation.

More than 620,000 Rohingya have crossed the border into Bangladesh since August, running from a military crackdown that Washington said this week clearly constituted ethnic cleansing.

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Friday said Rohingyas are still entering Bangladesh every day as Myanmar army did not stop persecution on them.

"We think taking step to repatriate Rohingyas without stopping repression and genocide in their homeland will be tantamount to pushing them to the hell," Dhaka Tribune quoted Alamgir as saying.

He added that his party wants displaced Rohingya people to be sent back to Myanmar with their citizenship through the signed instrument "or else, it'll turn out to be a failed deal".

Myanmar said the deal was based on a 1992/93 repatriation pact between the two countries that followed a previous spasm of violence.

A study prepared by the New York-based Amnesty International charged the Government of Myanmar with promoting and practicing a form of "apartheid" against the Rohingyas in that country's northern Rakhine state.

The study said that this suffocating control of the Rohingya population amounts to "apartheid", even as it continues with its probe into the root causes of a crisis.