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BANGLADESH-MYANAMR-ROHINGYA
Dhaka accuses Myanmar of spearheading concocted campaign on Rohingyas
DHAKA, Oct 30, 2019 (BSS) – Bangladesh today sharply accused Myanmar of
spearheading a “concocted campaign” to evade its pledge to return the
Rohingyas.
The foreign ministry today issued a long statement asking Nay Pyi Taw to
stop the concocted campaign containing “baseless accusation, falsification,
and misrepresentation of facts against Bangladesh”.
“The Government of Bangladesh rejects such baseless accusation,
falsification, and misrepresentation of facts,” read the statement adding
that Dhaka was deeply disappointed with Myanmar’s campaign.
Dhaka simultaneously asked Myanmar rather to concentrate on fulfilling
their obligation on Rohingyas repatriation from Bangladesh as “Bangladesh
recently noticed another round of such attempts to evade obligations.
The statement came as Myanmar Union Minister for International Cooperation
U Kyaw Tin recently accused Bangladesh of mischaracterizing Rohingya crisis
as “religious persecution”, “driving an ethnic group out of the country”,
“ethnic cleansing” or “genocide”.
In reality, the statement said, the international community made the
observations “based on documented evidence, which bear the unmistakable signs
of forcible deportation of a community from its ancestral homeland in Rakhine
under atrocity crimes on civilian population”.
The Myanmar minister made the statement at the Preparatory Ministerial
Meeting ahead of the recent Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Baku of Azerbaijan
while the event was joined by Bangladesh foreign minister Dr AK Abdul Momen
as well.
It said the Myanmar minister resorted to misrepresentation of the whole
issue as well as laying unjustified blames on Bangladesh in his effort to
refute the well-founded remarks by Momen on Rohingya crisis.
The statement said with “utter dismay’ Dhaka witnessed persistent campaign
on the part of Myanmar government “to mislead the international community
with fabricated and misrepresentation of facts”.
It said Myanmar was simultaneously accusing Dhaka of failure to initiate
the repatriation process to “avoid its (own) obligations for sustained
repatriation and reintegration of the forcibly displaced Rohingya in safety
and dignity”.
The statement asked Myanmar to seriously consider a comprehensive
international engagement in creating conducive environment for Rohingyas
return and monitoring the reintegration process.
“Myanmar should also cooperate with international community to eliminate
the culture of impunity for the sake of a durable solution to the protracted
problem,” the statement suggested.
The Myanmar Minister in his statement also claimed that the crisis was
confined only in the northern strip of Rakhine and people of different faiths
were living in harmony in the remaining areas across his country.
But Bangladesh foreign ministry pointed out “it is a well-known fact that
continued disenfranchisement of country’s ethnic minorities by successive
Myanmar governments.
Dhaka also accused successive Myanmar regimes of suppressing the minority
rights and their justified demands turning the country “as one of the world’s
largest homes to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and leading source of
cross border displacements”.
The statement pointed out that a substantial number of forcibly displaced
Myanmar nationals of varied ethnic and religious backgrounds are in temporary
shelter in different countries for decades and only a few could return and
reintegrate in their homeland.
Bangladesh blasted Myanmar for its continued campaign to portray Rohingyas
as “illegal-migrants” from Bangladesh during the colonial era.
“Now they came up with an innovation that there was a massive influx of
Bangladeshis to Myanmar during the War of Liberation of Bangladesh in 1971,”
it said calling the claim entirely baseless.
The statement said history suggested Rohingyas were a “distinct ethnic
community evolved over the centuries through mingling of migrated people of
various races and cultures from different parts of the world with the local
people in Rakhine”.
It recalled on two previous occasions Myanmar recognized displaced
Rohingyas in Bangladesh as their lawful residents and repatriated them and
“as far as the nationality of Rohingya is concerned . . . there cannot be any
scope of confusion”.
“Attempts to create controversy over their identity at this stage clearly
indicate that Myanmar still pursues the policy of exclusion and
marginalisation of its ethnic minorities,” the statement read.
More/PR/TA/RY/AR/1850 hrs