‘Ensuring safety of Rohingyas most challenging’

Staff Reporter :
The role of the law enforcers deployed at the Rohingya camps should not be undermined because ensuring safety and security of the Rohingyas are one of the most challenging tasks for them, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam said on Saturday.
“The complexity in dealing safety and security of the Rohingyas is one of the most challenging task for any trained forces whether that is Bangladesh police, APBn and intelligence,” he said.
The state minister said this while addressing a senior level dialogue on “Bangladesh and the Indo-Pacific Collaboration : Priority Issues and Concerns,” jointly organized by Bangladesh Center for Indo-Pacific Affairs and the Department of IR, Jahangirnagar University at a city hotel.
“We shall not compromise our national security. A certain section of the Rohingyas have been found to be engaged in criminal activities like terrorism, human trafficking, drug dealing and gender based violence,” he said.
He said, “We have recently noticed that Human Rights Watch (HRW) sounded critical on the law enforcing agencies role in dealing with the Rohingyas. We should know that the law enforcers are taking risk. They have experienced multiple fatalities in recent times.”
“The highhandedness of HRW in its recent report on the law enforcers undermine the challenges our law enforcers facing,” he stressed. Regarding the funding for Rohingyas, he said that Joint Response Plan for 2022 was not satisfactory as the international community could not provide sufficient fund for the humanitarian assistance.
He further said that Bangladesh, a country with less than three thousand US dollars per capita income, is spending over a billion dollars for Rohingyas from its own pockets.
“Bangladesh spent over a billion dollar that is $1.2 billion dollar in 2021 for Rohingyas. Whereas the international community is struggling to raise even 50 per cent of what Bangladesh is spending,” he said.
“It will hopefully remind our friends and encourage them to do little more because the 2022 JRP performance was not greatly encouraging and very soon we will sit together and launch JRP 2023,” he continued.
He further said that Bangladesh has been seeking support of the international community for the repatriation of the forcibly displaced Rohingyas.
He said, “Our government has taken a combination of bilateral, regional, and multilateral efforts to find a durable solution of this protracted situation. We have been repeatedly reminding the international community that the source of the problem is in Myanmar and the solution lies in Myanmar.”
Pointing out the volatile situation in Myanmar, Shahriar Alam said, “The internal political stability in Myanmar is indeed crucial and unfortunately at this present moment very little has been done for it.”
He also appreciated and welcomed the move for the adoption of first-ever UN Security Council resolution on Myanmar.
“Our sustained diplomatic efforts have kept the Rohingya issue alive. Various issues are unfolding in the global arena. Keeping the Rohingya issue alive is not an easy task as the attention of international community is being diverted to fresh humanitarian agencies in other parts of the world,” he observed.
Regarding the Indo-pacific engagement, he said, “There is no denying of the fact that the Indo-Pacific region has become a major driver of global growth. Competition among countries for their share in this growth bonanza is only natural, but healthy competition, of course, ushers in even healthier growth.”
“We also are witnessing a heightening of strategic competition in the region among some major actors. But Bangladesh is guided by the principle – friendship to all and malice to none. Bangladesh has been conducting her constructive engagement with the countries of the region in a fair, friendly, equitable and inclusive manner,” he said.
Therefore, competitions in the region need to be managed responsibly. We believe that any international dispute can be settled through peaceful means. If we uphold the international law with the principles of the UN Charter at its core, I don’t see any reason for not being able to manage competitions in Indo-Pacific, responsibly and peacefully, he added.
Secretary, Maritime Affairs Unit (MAU) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Rear Admiral (Retd) Md Khurshed Alam, Brig Gen (retd) M Sakhawat Hussain and UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Gwyn Lewis, among others, spoke.