Rohingya are seen after arriving on a boat to Bangladesh in Shah Porir Dip, Bangladesh on September 14, 2017. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017 during the outbreak of violence in Rakhine state.
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Bangladesh hopes the Southeast Asian states will pressurize Myanmar to repatriate displaced Rohingya and bring them home, the Foreign Minister said.
AK Abdul Momen said Bangladesh carried the burden of Rohingya Muslims who sought refuge in the South Asian country following a mass exodus due to brutal acts by the Myanmar army in 2017.
The Rohingya are a persecuted Muslim minority from the state of Rakhine in western Myanmar. While there have been major migrations from Rohingya to Bangladesh since the 1970s, none has been as rapid and massive as the exodus in August 2017.
“Around 1.1 million persecuted Rohingyas are currently protected in Bangladesh,” Momen told CNBC’s “Streets Signs Asia” on Monday. “Our priority is that these Rohingya persecuted people return to their homeland for a decent life,” he said.
Bangladesh took in the Rohingya on humanitarian grounds, but the South Asian nation now has “trouble with them,” Momen said. He hopes ASEAN member states – or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – will play an important role at the upcoming summit in getting the Myanmar military government to take back the refugees.
“Now that the Myanmar government has been invited by ASEAN to the Indonesia summit, this is good news. At least they will go there and then maybe ASEAN pressures them to hopefully take their people back,” Momen said.
Myanmar is currently in a state of emergency following a February 1 military coup in which the powerful junta ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Comments come as Myanmar’s military commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing is reported to be attending the ASEAN summit in Indonesia on April 24th. The 10-member regional bloc has tried to find a way to defuse the escalating crisis in Myanmar, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 700 civilians have been killed and more than 3,000 detained so far.
Observers have warned that Myanmar is on the verge of becoming a “failed state” and that the world’s great powers must make greater international efforts to resolve the violence.
While the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh did not comment on the recent military coup, he stressed that his government wants stability to return to Myanmar.
“Bangladesh believes in democracy. And we want the legal system to last,” said Momen, adding that his country does not support violence as it only leads to “more violence and insecurity”.
