Seen in Rohingya after arriving by boat in Bangladesh on September 14, 2017 at Shah Porir Dip, Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017 during the outbreak of violence in Rakhine state.
Allison Joyce | Getty Images
Bangladesh expects Southeast Asian nations to pressure Myanmar to repatriate displaced Rohingya and take them home, according to the foreign minister.
AK Abdul Momen said Bangladesh has borne the brunt of Rohingya Muslims, who have been seeking refuge in the South Asian country after a mass exodus due to a brutal crackdown by the Myanmar army in 2017.
The Rohingya are a persecuted Muslim minority in the state of Rakhine in western Myanmar. Although there have been large rohingya migrations to Bangladesh since the 1970s, none were as rapid and massive as the August 2017 exodus.
“About 1.1 million persecuted Rohingya are now protected in Bangladesh,” Momen told CNBC’s “Streets Signs Asia” on Monday. “Our priority is for these people persecuted with Rohingya to return home to live with dignity,” he said.
Bangladesh welcomed the Rohingya for humanitarian reasons, but the South Asian nation now “faces difficulties,” Momen said. He hopes that the member states of ASEAN (or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) will play an important role in the next summit to get the Myanmar military government to recover the refugees.
“Now that ASEAN has invited the government of Myanmar to the Indonesian summit, it is good news. At least they will go there and maybe they will be pressured by ASEAN, hopefully, to get their people back “Momen said.
Myanmar is currently in a state of emergency, following a military coup on February 1, which saw the powerful junta oust the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Momen’s comments come as Myanmar’s military commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, is expected to attend the ASEAN summit in Indonesia on April 24. The ten-member regional bloc has been trying to find a way to disable the escalating crisis in Myanmar, which has so far killed 700 civilians and detained more than 3,000, according to the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners.
Observers have warned that Myanmar could be on the verge of becoming a “failed state” and that there needs to be a greater international effort by the world’s major powers to resolve the violence.
Although the Bangladesh Foreign Minister took no position on the latest military coup, he stressed that his government wants stability to return to Myanmar.
“Bangladesh believes in democracy. And we want the legal system to be maintained,” Momen said, adding that her country does not support violence as it only leads to “more violence and uncertainty.”