For a peaceful solution, don’t want to fight

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she wanted a peaceful solution to the Rohingya crisis evading confrontation with anybody over the issue.

“I don’t want to fight with anybody. I want a peaceful solution, because they [Myanmar] are my next door neighbour,” she told Today’s WorldView, the weekday newsletter of The Washington Post.

Hasina, however, said if the international community thought sanctions against Myanmar could work to resolve the crisis that could be “fine, well and good”. “But I can’t suggest that,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.

The statement was mentioned in an article ran by Today’s Worldview titled “The Rohingya Crisis Can’t Stay Bangladesh’s Burden, prime minister says,” written by foreign affairs reporter Ishaan Tharoor.

It also stated that Hasina said she has discussed the matter with Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader. “She [Suu Kyi] then blamed the military. She told me that the military doesn’t listen to her that much,” the premier told the newsletter, referring to a 2016 conversation at a regional summit hosted in India.

But the Myanmar leader has followed in lockstep with the country’s military and refuses to even use the word “Rohingya” to describe the ethnic group that long persecuted by the central state in Rakhine.

“Now I can see she [Suu Kyi] has changed her position,” Hasina told the newspaper.

The article said Hasina is sympathetic to the plight of Rohingyas.

“It’s a big burden for Bangladesh, no doubt. But what they faced was almost some kind of genocide,” she told during the interview at a midtown hotel in Manhattan on Friday, referring to the violence on the Rohingya community in 2017.

“Killing, torturing, arson, rape and so many things happened. They were forced to run away from their country for their safety and security,” she told the newspaper.

If they have to stay longer in Bangladesh, very easily they can be converted or join ”militant groups,” the premier said, adding that her government confirmed new measures last week to build barbed-wire fences around Rohingya camps and to patrol their perimeters.

The PM said the Rohingyas have been given shelter for now. “They are in my soil,” she said. “What else can we do?”

She hoped that the international community could apply more pressure on her neighbour.

“The problem with Myanmar is that they don’t listen to anybody,” she said.

She pointed to the reports of girls and young women falling prey to illicit human-trafficking networks that have reached to the Cox’s Bazar camps, home to more than 1 million Rohingyas.

The article said that in her speech last week from the dais of the UN General Assembly, Hasina said the international community must understand the gravity of the situation.

Her nation, she added, is dealing with “a crisis which is Myanmar’s own making”. Authorities in Myanmar view the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority, as interlopers and noncitizens -- a position rejected by the international community, it said.

WSJ INTERVIEWS PM

Hasina has called upon Myanmar to take action to ensure the Rohingyas’ safety and security.

The premier said this when she was interviewed by Dan Keeler of The Wall Street Journal in New York this week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Asked if she would consider forcing the Rohingyas to return to Myanmar, the prime minister told WSJ: “Definitely they should go back to their own country.”

But she did not suggest Bangladesh would use force to make that happen, the WSJ report said.

She also said the international community seems to be failing in not convincing Myanmar to welcome the refugees back, but added “I cannot blame anybody because Myanmar is not listening to anyone,” it continued.

WJS report quoted her as saying “Bangladesh would continue to host the refugees, but that their presence was taking a toll.”