Three female Nobel Peace laureates will meet Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to see first-hand the situation at the camps and assess the violence they endured at their homeland in Rakhine State in Myanmar.
The three laureates are Shirin Ebadi of Iran, Tawakkol Karman of Yemen and Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland.
Nobel Women’s Initiative, an organisation of female Nobel Peace laureates, has organised the tour dubbed ‘Standing with Rohingya Women: Nobel Women 2018 Delegation’ in partnership with Bangladeshi women’s rights organisation Naripokkho.
They will spend time in Dhaka and in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar to meet female refugees, government officials, human rights organisations and diplomats, according to a media advisory released by Nobel Women’s Initiative.
A Naripokkho spokesperson told bdnews24.com on Saturday night that Karman and Maguire already arrived in Dhaka.
On Sunday, the three Nobel laureates will travel to Cox’s Bazar, where the refugee camps are situated, the spokesperson said.
Cox’s Bazar is Bangladesh’s south-eastern tourist district bordering Myanmar.
The Naripokkho spokesperson also said the three Nobel laureates would meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday.
Their visit to the camp on Sunday will coincide with the sixth month of the latest wave of military violence in Myanmar, it noted in a separate news release.
The number of refugees in Bangladesh is now over a million after around 700,000 Rohingyas fled violence in Myanmar since Aug 25 last year, when the Myanmar army launched an operation which many international organisations dubbed ethnic cleansing.
Aung San Suu Kyi, who won Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma, has faced widespread criticism for not raising her voice against the atrocities by the military.
She is now the de facto leader of the Government of Myanmar, still controlled by the country’s military.
Source: bdnews24