Upcoming tripartite meeting on Rohingya repatriation.

That a tripartite meeting among Bangladesh, China and Myanmar over Rohingya repatriation will be held in Dhaka on January 19 is welcome. According to Foreign minister Dr A K Abdul Momen, as different media reported on Wednesday, the tripartite meeting, which was supposed to be held last week but is deferred to January 19 as the Chinese foreign minister is scheduled to visit Myanmar in the meantime, will be a secretary-level one. Delegations from China and Myanmar will be in Dhaka to sit for the meeting with the host Bangladesh side. Beijing earlier had assured Dhaka that it would take initiatives to arrange the second round of foreign minister- level 'tripartite talks' over Rohingya repatriation after Myanmar general election that was held in November. The proposed meeting is apparently in a sequel to that initiative. The first tripartite meeting among the foreign ministers of Bangladesh, China and Myanmar was held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in 2019. Following the meeting, Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a number of agreements on the repatriation of the displaced Myanmar citizens. Not only that, in compliance with the agreements, Bangladesh has so far handed over biometric data of 840,000 forcibly displaced Rohingyas to Myanmar authority. Regrettably, however, in a display of utter insincerity, the Myanmar authority has so far verified only 42,000 biometric data out of 8.4 lakh, let alone take back any of the refugees. Yet, Bangladesh keeps hope very high about positive outcomes from the imminent meeting. As the foreign minister has said, Dhaka is always hopeful about the Rohingya repatriation as there is no alternative to repatriation. Since August 25 in 2017, Bangladesh has been hosting over 1.1 million forcefully displaced Rohingyas at different camps in Cox's Bazar. Most of them arrived there after a military crackdown by Myanmar, which the UN called a 'textbook example of ethnic cleansing' and other rights groups dubbed 'genocide'. Not only that, there were lakhs of Rohingyas beforehand who had entered Bangladesh in...