Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has called for a shared responsibility of neighbourhood countries and developed nations in sheltering Rohingyas as UK’s state minister for its foreign and commonwealth office called him over the 500 reportedly stranded Rohingyas in Bay of Bengal.
The FM asked the UK to send its ‘Royal Ship’ patrolling in the Gulf to rescue Rohingyas stranded in the Bay of Bengal along the Myanmar border and shelter them.
British state minister for foreign affairs Lord Ahmad phoned him on Monday night and requested Bangladesh to give them shelter, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. A senior official at the foreign ministry told Bangladesh Post that giving shelter to only 500 Rohingyas is not a problem for Bangladesh when the country gave shelter to over 1.1 million Rohingyas from Myanmar despite limited resources.
The foreign minister reminded the British minister about the responsibility all countries including those along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea to share the responsibility and helping the distressed people in the deep sea.
DrMomen told him that other countries in the region were not requested to do the same thing Bangladesh did.
The British minister’s phone came amid international media reports suggested that two boats carrying an estimated 500 Rohingya women, men and children were floating on the sea after being denied entry into Malaysia.
Several international rights groups including UNHCR earlier called upon Bangladesh and other countries in the region in rescuing the floating people who were at sea for weeks without “adequate food and water”.
The foreign ministry in a statement said DrMomen told the British state minister that the boats were not on the Bangladesh coastlines and wondered why Bangladesh alone was being asked to provide them the refuge. He said the other countries in South and South East Asia and developed nations as well should simultaneously shoulder responsibilities of providing refuge to the displaced people. He feared that the situation could prompt the remaining Rohingyas in Myanmar’s Rakhine state try to enter Bangladesh as military crackdowns were still underway to kill them and oust the ethnic minority people from their homeland.
Yet, DrMomen regretted, different countries including European Union kept on investing in Myanmar and the human rights bodies are not vocal over the issues. He earlier told a foreign TV channel that just weeks ago, Bangladesh rescued 396 people from a vessel that had been adrift for about two months after also failing to reach Malaysia. “Why should Bangladesh take the responsibility every time? . . .
Bangladesh has already taken more than a million of Rohingya. We are running out of our generosity now,” Momen said. Amnesty International last week called upon Southeast Asian governments to launch immediate search and rescue operations for Rohingyas languishing at sea adding that the COVID-19 pandemic should be a pretext for governments to abandon their responsibilities towards refugees.
“Bangladesh cannot be left to address this situation alone. The fact that it is upholding its own obligations is not an excuse for others to abandon theirs,” the global right watchdog’s South Asia director Biraj Patnaik said in a statement.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) also said that “all countries, including Malaysia and Thailand, have the responsibility”.
It said the international law obligate all these countries to respond to boats in distress, enact or coordinate rescue operations within their search and rescue operations, and not to push back asylum seekers risking their lives at sea.
Bangladesh earlier gave shelter to over 1.1 million Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar district with most of them arrived there since August 25, 2017 after a military crackdown by Myanmar, which is dubbed as genocide by many. Investigations are underway in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
