Hasan Mahmud likely to meet Myanmar FM on sidelines of NAM summit

Foreign Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud today said he is likely to hold a meeting with his Myanmar counterpart on the sidelines
of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit to be held in Uganda.

“I am going to attend NAM summit … I may hold a meeting with Myanmar
foreign minister there,” he told reporters at Shah Amanat International
airport in Chattogram.

He made the remark while responding to a question on his plan to repatriate
1.4 million forcibly displaced Rohingyas from Bangladesh to Myanmar.

“We have always been trying to resolve the (Rohingya) issue through
diplomacy, we are increasing more engagement with them (Myanmar). We firmly
believe that diplomatically it can be resolved,” he said.

Mahmud is set to embark on his maiden multilateral tour as the foreign
minister to Uganda on January 17 to attend the NAM Summit in Kampala.

Bangladesh wanted to begin repatriation of Rohingyas to Myanmar last year,
initially with around 1,000 displaced Myanmar nationals, according to the
ministry of foreign affairs.

The socio-economic, demographic, and environmental cost of sheltering huge
number of Rohingyas for such a long time is pushing Bangladesh to the limit,
said the foreign ministry.

Since August 25 in 2017, Bangladesh has been hosting over 1.2 million
forcefully displaced Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar district and most of them
arrived there after a military crackdown by Myanmar, which the UN called a
“textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and other rights groups dubbed it as
“genocide”.

In the last nearly six and a half years, not a single Rohingya went back
home.

Myanmar agreed to take them back, but repatriation attempts failed twice due
to trust deficit among the Rohingyas about their safety and security in
Rakhine state. (BSS)