Rakhine is home of Rohingyas: Canada’s special envoy

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DHAKA, July 9, 2018 (BSS) – Canadian Prime Minister’s special envoy to
Myanmar Bob Rae today called for more international engagements for safe
repatriation of Rohingyas saying that Myanmar’s Rakhine state is their
homeland and described the crisis as a “too bigger” problem for Bangladesh.

“That (Rakhine) is the home of Rohingyas, every time I go to the (Rohingya)
camps and ask them — where is your home? . . . They just say my home is
Rakhine. I am a person from Rakhine,” he told a selected group of journalists
including a BSS correspondent in the capital.

He said Rohingyas must return to Myanmar with condition of safety,
security and dignity as well as their political rights.

Rae, however, said the most crucial need of the time for the international
community was to extend enhanced assistance for Bangladesh as the crisis was
“too bigger” an issue for a single country.

“What is the most important thing we need to describe is that Bangladesh
cannot be left to feel that they are alone in dealing with this challenge,”
he said.

Rae added: “It’s too much for a single country to deal with, it’s too
bigger problem, so we need more international assistant.”

Bangladesh appeared as a makeshift abode of over 1 million forcibly
displaced Rohingyas while some 700,000 of them crossed the border since the
Myanmar military launched a ruthless clampdown in Rakhine to flush them out
from their home on August 25 last year.

UN called the action “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and rights
groups dubbed it “genocide”.

The envoy said Canada decided to increase its assistance to Bangladesh for
dealing with the crisis and “other countries need to do same”.

He said Rohignyas emerged as the current world’s largest community without
land “we can’t have 2 million stateless people who are citizen of Myanmar.”

Rae feared significant elements of Myanmar society were unwilling to
accept Rohingyas presence and so “we have to recognize its political
situation and required a political solution”.

“They (Rohingys) won’t be able to go back if conditions are not safe and
secure. We can’t morally and legally send people back to a condition that is
not safe,” he observed.

He suggested that Myanamr politicians need to do some political
compromises by awarding citizenship to Rohingyas in bid to resolve the
problem.

Rae also said those responsible for international crimes, including crimes
against humanity and genocide, must be held responsible for those crimes in
order to ensure accountability and to end impunity for violations of
international law.

He put emphasis on gathering information of atrocities against Rohingyas in
a “very systematic way” to hold perpetrators accountable and find political
solution to Rohingya crisis.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau appointed Rae as his
special envoy to Myanmar on October 23 and since then he has been travelling
a number of countries including Bangladesh and Myanmar to discus with
political leaders, officials, and other concerned groups to make Canadian
contribution in resolving the Rohingya crisis.