Alwaght- Bangladesh has counted more than one million Rohingya Muslim refugees living in camps near the border with Myanmar, higher than previous estimates as controversial preparations for their return got under way.
The Bangladesh army began biometric registering of the refugees last year after the latest mass influx of Rohingya from Myanmar, where the Muslim minority have faced decades of persecution.
The registration is aimed partly at aiding repatriation of the refugees – a controversial issue as most say they do not want to return.
Bangladesh says it wants to start sending them home next week and has reached an initial agreement with Myanmar to complete the process within two years.
"So far we've registered 1,004,742 Rohingya. They are given biometric registration cards," said Saidur Rahman, a brigadier general with the Bangladesh army who heads the Rohingya registration project, told reporters. Several thousand more have yet to be registered, he said.
The figures are higher than those provided by the UN, which estimates there are 962,000 Rohingya living in southeast Bangladesh, near the Myanmar border.
That includes the 655,000 the UN estimates have entered the country since Aug 25, when the Myanmar military launched a violent crackdown in Rakhine state.
Doctors Without Borders has said at least 6,700 Rohingya Muslims were killed in the first month of the crackdown.
Meanwhile, Hundreds of Rohingya refugees staged protests in Bangladesh Friday against plans to send them back to Myanmar, where a military crackdown last year sparked a mass exodus.
The refugees chanted slogans and held banners demanding citizenship and guarantees of security before they return to their home state of Rakhine in Myanmar.
The protest came ahead of a visit by UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee to the camps in southeastern Bangladesh where around a million of the Muslim minority are now living.
Last month UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein said genocide charges could be brought against Myanmar following the country’s campaign against the country's Rohingya Muslims.
Zeid has already called the campaign “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and asked rhetorically if anyone could rule out “elements of genocide”.
