POPE CALLS REFUGEES ‘ROHINGYA’ AFTER MEETING
Pontiff urges the world to take ‘decivise’ measures to address crisis
DHAKA
POPE Francis referred to refugees who have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh as “Rohingya” yesterday, using a politically sensitive name for the persecuted minority for the first time on an Asia tour dominated by their plight after meeting some of them here.
He made the comments after speaking to a small group of the refugees who had fled across the border in terror in recent months, after they travelled to the capital from their camp to meet him.
Among them was Shawkat Ara, a 12-year-old Rohingya orphan who broke down in tears shortly after the pope spoke to her and gently touched her head.
She later said she escaped to Bangladesh after losing her entire family in an attack by the military in Myanmar.
“Today, the presence of God is also called Rohingya,” the pope said after the emotional encounter with the refugees on the sidelines of a gathering with the leaders of different faiths here.
“Let us continue to do the right thing and help them. Let us continue to work to ensure that their rights are recognised,” he said.
“Let us not close our hearts, let us not look the other way.”
More than 620,000 Rohingya refugees have flooded into Bangladesh in the last three months, fleeing a violent military crackdown in mainly Buddhist Myanmar that the United Nations had described as ethnic cleansing.
Pope Francis is known for championing the rights of refugees and has repeatedly expressed his support for the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority whom he has described as his “brothers and sisters”.
But the usually forthright pontiff walked a diplomatic tightrope during his four days in Myanmar — the first ever papal visit to the country — avoiding any direct reference to the ethnic cleansing allegations in public, while appealing to Buddhist leaders to overcome “prejudice and hatred”.
Hours after arriving in Bangladesh, he addressed the issue head-on, calling for “decisive” international measures to address the “grave crisis”.
But, as in Myanmar, he avoided using the term “Rohingya”, drawing criticism from some rights activists and refugees.
The word is politically sensitive in Myanmar because many there refused to see the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group.
He has praised Bangladesh for giving refuge to the Rohingya, who have brought with them stories of horrific abuse at the hands of the Myanmar military and local Buddhist mobs, including rape, arson and murder.
Earlier, the pope led a giant open-air mass in Dhaka attended by around 100,000 Bangladeshi Catholics, who sang hymns in Bengali and chanted “viva il papa” (long live the pope) as he was driven through the crowd in an open-sided popemobile.
Bangladesh has a tiny Christian population, but they turned out in large numbers for yesterday’s service, many having queued for hours to get into the park.
Some 4,000 police and security forces were deployed for the mass in the mainly Muslim country, which has suffered a number of attacks on religious minorities by Islamist extremists in recent years. AFP