The UK Senior State Minister for Foreign Affairs has said that the long-standing Rohingya issue will not be settled until Myanmar recognises their citizenship with the same rights that its citizens currently enjoy.
Baroness Warsi said she talked to the Rohingya community and they said they would go back home if they get their rights.
“Nobody wants to leave their country where they born and raised until some terrible circumstances (force them),” she said on Wednesday at a press briefing after ending her three-day visit to Bangladesh.
She had been to Cox’s Bazar where she met Rohingya communities in official and unofficial camps and termed their condition ‘tragic’.
She said she fully agreed with Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister that the Rohingya issue was a challenge for the Myanmar that has to be dealt with ‘first and foremost’.
“We continuously are working with the Myanmar asking them to give their rights like other citizens in the country,” she said and added that her colleague who oversees Myanmar recently visited the Rakhaine state and talked with the Rohingya leaders there.
The intrusion of Rohingyas in Bangladesh started in 1978. Bangladesh officially accommodates about 30,000 Rohingya refugees, though different estimates put the unofficial figure between 0.3 and 0.5 million.
Myanmar has been denying them citizenship for long despite the fact that Bangladesh witnesses fresh influx when any violence occurs in the Rakhaine state.
“They are the most marginalised people in the world effectively being left stateless by their own country,” the minister said.
“We are working with Burma to make our views very clear about the expectations of those people,” she reiterated.
She thanked Bangladesh for ‘working hard’ and taking the ‘responsibilities’ for looking after the Rohingya community.
Source: bdnews24
