MYANMAR, 16 August 2026 (TON): Over 300,000 Rohingya refugees verified for repatriation as exodus enters 9 year:Myanmar’s government said Saturday that more than 300,000 Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh are former residents of western Rakhine state and that it will accept their return once security conditions improve.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement comes as the Rohingya refugee crisis enters its ninth year, with hundreds of thousands of refugees still living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing Myanmar in August 2017 when the military launched a crackdown following attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group on guard posts in Rakhine.
The operation drove more than 700,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands of others already living there for decades in the wake of waves of previous violence perpetrated by Myanmar’s military.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said in late July that Myanmar had agreed to take back 5,000 Rohingya refugees currently living in Malaysia as part of a repatriation programme. However, Myanmar’s foreign ministry confirmed that the repatriation program was focused solely on verified Myanmar nationals currently held in detention centres in Malaysia and rejected reports that the government would accept Rohingya. The Ministry said 113,507 people could not be verified and that 4,241 people were found to have been involved in what it called terrorist activities.