Dhaka for int’l efforts to expedite Rohingya return
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina is likely to place some new proposals at the UN General Assembly for international efforts to expedite repatriation of the Rohingya people to Rakhine of Myanmar, foreign minister AK Abdul Momen said on Wednesday.
She would place the new proposals incorporating her five-point and three-point proposals in the 72nd and 73rd UNGAs, which, according to the foreign minister, ‘are still relevant to our effort in finding a solution to the Rohingya crisis.’
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina would leave Dhaka for New York on Friday afternoon for the UNGA, he said at a press conference in Dhaka.
Foreign minister AK Abdul Momen, state minister for foreign affairs M Shahriar Alam and foreign secretary M Shahidul Haque would accompany the prime minister.
Momen said he would also join a meeting of foreign ministers of Bangladesh, China and Myanmar in New York for discussion on solutions to the Rohingya crisis. The meeting would take place on September 24 or 25.
Sheikh Hasina would also join several high-level multi-stakeholder meetings in New York on the sideline.
She would hold a bilateral meeting with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on November 24.
She would also hold meetings with Bill gates, co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Alex V Volkov, chairman of ExxonMobil LNG Market Development Inc, and ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres would call on prime minister Hasina on September 28.
She is expected to leave New York on September 29 to reach home on October 1.
More than 7,00,000 Rohingyas, mostly women, children and aged people, entered Bangladesh after fleeing unbridled murder, arson and rape during ‘security operations’ by the Myanmar military in Rakhine, what the United Nations denounced as ethnic cleansing and genocide, beginning from August 25, 2017.
The latest Rohingya influx took the number of undocumented Myanmar nationals and registered refugees from that country in Bangladesh to about 11,16,000, according to estimates by UN agencies and Bangladesh foreign ministry.
The first attempt at repatriation failed on 15 November 2018.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
