Hasina: Bangladesh will continue to help Rohingya
DHAKA: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said her government will continue to support nearly one million Rohingya Muslims who have fled neighbouring Myanmar to escape violence.
Hasina said the government was pursuing a plan to build temporary shelters for the Rohingya on an island with the help of international aid agencies.
She made the statement yesterday at Dhaka airport on her return from New York after attending the UN General Assembly session. The UN has described the violence in Myanmar as “ethnic cleansing”.
Hasina accused Myanmar of creating tensions at the border, but said she has asked the country’s security forces to deal with the crisis “very carefully”. “They pretended like they wanted a war,” she said.
More than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims have crossed over to Bangladesh since late August, when Myanmar security forces responded to militant attacks with a broad crackdown that witnesses and rights groups say has included killing and arson. An equal number of Rohingya Muslims have previously fled Myanmar since 1978.
Myanmar doesn’t recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic group, instead insisting they are Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living illegally in the country. Myanmar has come under international criticism for failing to stop the recent violence in its Rakhine state and in turn an exodus that has become the largest refugee crisis to hit Asia. —