NGOs concerned about the safety of Rohingya being repatriated to Myanmar should demand that a joint mechanism be set up by Myanmar and Bangladesh to evaluate returnees prior to being sent back to determine whether or not they hold extremist and militant views.
Why?
1.) On a practical level, setting up and implementing such a mechanism would indefinitely delay repatriation; which is a good thing.
2.) It would hinder Myanmar’s ability to later allege that returnees are militants and a threat to security, when they have themselves declared them innocent of that charge.
3.) It would be an implicit confession by the regime that the refugees had been persecuted wrongfully, as the government would officially classify them as non-threatening
4.) If the regime refuses to implement this measure, any subsequent claim that returnees are militants would be undermined by the fact that the government refused to take obvious steps to weed out militants when they had the chance during repatriation to do so.
The agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar has been signed, and it will be enforced…what is left for us to do is to at least try to scuttle its implementation as much as possible, and to try to force inclusion of measures in the modalities of implementation that can protect the refugees safety as much as possible.