QUESTIONS ON ROHINGYA
Climate is just not the only issue on which Bangladesh sees inaction from the West.
Around 750, 000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017 after a scorched-earth marketing campaign against the minority team by troops in neighbouring Myanmar, the campaign that the United States has described as genocide.
While the world has saluted Bangladesh for taking in the asylum seekers – along with one hundred, 000 who fled earlier violence – attention has moved since the COVID-19 outbreak and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“As long as they are in our nation, we feel that it is our duty, ” she said. However for Bangladeshi hosts, patience is running slim, she said.
Michelle Bachelet, then the UN human legal rights chief, said on a visit in August that there was growing anti-Rohingya sentiment within Bangladesh.
“Local people also suffer a lot, ” Hasina said. “I aren’t say that they’re upset, but they feel uncomfortable. ”
“All the burden is arriving upon us. This can be a problem. ”
The Rohingya political refugees, who are mostly Muslim, live largely within ramshackle camps along with tarpaulins, sheet metallic and bamboo.
Bachelet on her go to said there was no prospect of delivering them back to Buddhist-majority, military-run Myanmar, in which the Rohingya are not regarded as citizens.
But in her interview, Hasina signalled that there were few options besides for the Rohingya to call home in camps.
“It is not feasible for us to give all of them an open space because they get their own country. They want to go back there. To ensure that is the main concern for everybody, ” Hasina said.
“If anybody wants to take them, they can take them, ” she added. “Why should I object? ”