Bangladesh on Tuesday rejected the Myanmar statement of the number of Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, saying the statement “were based on erroneous statistics”.

Director General (Myanmar) of the ministry of foreign affairs, Md. Toufiq-ur-Rahman, made the remark when he met Myanmar Ambassador to Bangladesh U Kyaw Soe Moe at the ministry, a press release said.

Referring to the latest press statement issued by Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry on Aug 15 on the Rohingya issue, Toufiq-ur-Rahman said the data registered under the UN system reflects the accurate numbers of the Rohingya refugees.

The DG also requested the Myanmar ambassador to expedite the verification process in line with the agreed bilateral instruments. 

He stressed that Myanmar should take into account children born in the refugee camps in Bangladesh as well as new arrivals who were forced to leave Rakhine after 2017.

Myanmar’s military-backed government on Saturday said 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 junta government said it had verified 426,545 of the 828,824 refugees on a list provided by Bangladesh as of the end of July this year, and determined that 308,797 of those verified were former residents of Rakhine.

It said 113,507 people could not be verified and 4,241 people were found to have been involved in what it called terrorist activities.

Bangladesh currently hosts more than one million Rohingya refugees in the sprawling camps in the southern district of Cox’s Bazar.

More than 7,50,000 of them fled Myanmar following the military crackdown on the Muslim ethnic group in 2017.

Toufiq also rejected the description of the Rohingyas as “Bengalis”, saying they have their own ethnic identity, which had been accepted by Myanmar authorities until recently.

Ambassador Soe Moe assured the Bangladesh side that he would convey its concerns and observations to his capital. He also expressed his government’s commitment to expediting the verification process to pave the way for the repatriation of verified Rohingyas.

The DG reiterated that the only sustainable solution to the Rohingya crisis is their safe, dignified and voluntary repatriation to Rakhine.