YANGON: ASEAN's disaster management unit AHA Centre has come out to defend its assessment of the repatriation of Rohingya refugees, following an outcry over the report it had submitted to Myanmar at the end of May.
"Our assessment is very focused – tasked by ASEAN leaders to conduct needs assessment to identify areas that ASEAN can offer to facilitate the repatriation process so it’s very focused - it’s just to facilitate."ERAT had put together the 60-page Preliminary Needs Assessment report after visiting Rakhine State in March.
Ms Adelina explained:"Based on our calculations, if Myanmar were to manually process refugees based on its current capacity, which is 300 a day, then it would take six years.AFP also quoted Amnesty International as saying that it was"astonishing" the report failed to mention the military atrocities that drove the Rohingya out, the continued segregation of those who remained or ongoing armed conflict in Rakhine.
In other words, ERAT does not have the authority to focus on issues not tasked to them by ASEAN leaders or Myanmar - including looking into allegations of human rights abuses by the army. AFP had also said the Preliminary Needs Assessment failed to use the term Rohingyas in its report and instead chose the term"Muslims".
She declined to give further details when asked to clarify what aspects of physical safety was covered in the report.
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