UN Security Council ‘to press for Rohingya solution’
THE UN Security Council will press Myanmar to ensure that Rohingya who fled the country can return home in safety and freedom, an envoy said Monday after UN diplomats ended a tour of Bangladesh’s refugee camps.
“This is a humanitarian crisis and a human rights issue,” Kuwait’s ambassador to the UN, Mansour al-Otaibi, told reporters after the delegation ended a three-day visit to Bangladesh and headed for Myanmar.
Envoys from the 15 council members on Sunday visited camps around Cox’s Bazar where about 700,000 Rohingya have sought refuge since Myanmar’s military launched a crackdown on their community in Rakhine state last August. The United Nations has called the military action “ethnic cleansing”.
Some of the Muslim refugees broke down in tears as they told harrowing stories of murder and rape in mainly Buddhist Myanmar. Hundreds staged demonstrations demanding justice
The envoys met Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday morning before leaving for Myanmar, where they will hold talks with de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. They will also take a helicopter flight over Rakhine to see the remains of villages torched during the violence.
“The situation cannot remain without a solution and the message that we are conveying to Myanmar, to refugees themselves, to the rest of the world, [is] that we are determined to find a solution to this crisis,” alOtaibi said.
“All parties should show commitment to solve it as soon as possible. We cannot remain silent about it,” said al-Otaibi, whose country helped organised the tour with Britain and Peru.
The Kuwaiti diplomat said the Security Council would “try to explore ways to speed up implementation of the [repatriation accord] signed between Bangladesh and Myanmar for safe, free, voluntary and dignified return of the refugees.”
Refugees themselves want guarantees of safety and – crucially – citizenship if they return to a country which regards them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.