Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Monday called upon the international community to show their leadership instead of giving ‘lip service’ to solve the Rohingya crisis.
“It demands the leadership of the world that we must do something. We must provide them a future. We cannot do lip service in the name of Rohingya refugees. We cannot do business as usual,” he said while speaking at an international women’s day event.
The Diplomatic Correspondents Association, Bangladesh (DCAB) organised the event styled “Women in Diplomacy: How Are We Doing?” with the support of Bangabandhu Research Centre for Foreign Policy and Diplomacy at the Foreign Service Academy in Dhaka.
Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen, Secretary (East) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mashfee Binte Shams, UN Resident Coordinator Mia Seppo, Rector of the Foreign Service Academy Syed Masud Mahmood Khundoker, Switzerland Ambassador to Bangladesh Nathalie Chuard, Ambassador of Sweden to Bangladesh Alexandra Berg von Linde, High Commissioner of Maldives to Bangladesh Shiruzimath Sameer, Director General of Public Diplomacy wing at the foreign ministry Samia Halim, DCAB President Pantho Rahman and its General Secretary AKM Moinuddin spoke, among others, at the event.
DCAB member Israt Jahan Urmi presented the keynote paper.
The foreign minister said there are many women among the 1.1 million Rohingya refugees who took shelter in Bangladesh.
“I get very upset when I see these people who have no future. They are becoming hopeless and frustrated. They want to go back to Myanmar for a decent living,” he said, asking the Western countries to do more instead of giving sanctions on one or two army generals.
The Myanmar military is accused of carrying out the ethnic cleansing in the Rakhine State that forced the Rohingya refugees to flee the country.
Bangladesh has given them shelter in Cox’s Bazar which has become the world’s most crowded refugee camps. New accommodation to a nearby river island Bhasan Char has been built to relocate 100,000 of them before repatriation to decongest the camps.
But Western countries criticized the move.
The foreign minister said it is ‘irrelevant’ to raise questions about the Bhasan Char.
“Relevant is they must go back,” he said.
He also lamented that both trade and investment in Myanmar over the last four years after the 2017 ethnic cleansing have increased three and half times to 15 times which is really “shocking”.
“Fifteen times! Can you believe it? A country that has violated human rights, did ethnic cleansing and can you promote them with trade and business and you talk about human rights?” he told the international community.
He once again said that if the issue remained unresolved, there is a possibility of the pockets of radicalism or extremism.
“Terrorists have no boundary, no borders, and no faith. They will create problems for the whole world,” he said.