Rohingya crisis: BNP opposes PM’s safe zone proposal

BNP today opposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s proposal to build safe zones for Rohingya people inside Myanmar saying it will “go against the interest of Rohingyas and Bangladesh”.

“We are rejecting the prime minister’s concept of safe zone. It will go against the interest of Rohingyas and Bangladesh as well,” BNP Standing Committee Member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said.

On Friday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has given five-pint proposals including setting up safe zone in Myanmar in her speech at United Nations to find out solution to put an end to the Rohingya crisis.

“We urge the prime minister to refrain from repeating the word “safe zone” as the concept is conspicuous,” he said.

Without explaining the reasons behind his opposition on the concept, the BNP leader placed four-point recommendations to end the Rohingya crisis.

The four-point proposals are:

1. Forging a national unity to face the Rohingya crisis and to mount pressure on Myanmar forcing the country for taking back its people from Bangladesh.

2. Recognisation of Rohingya people, who fled to Bangladesh in the face of persecution, as refugee.

3. Mounting diplomatic pressure on Myanmar collectively in association of the United Nations so that the country is forced to give the citizenship to the Rohingyas.

4. Addressing the Rohingya crisis in light of the ‘Repatriation Act’ inked during the tenure of the party founder Ziaur Rahman in 1978.

Mosharraf was addressing a roundtable on “Genocide in Myanmar and role of Bangladesh” at a hotel in Gulshan where diplomats from different countries including US, the UK, Canada, Spean, Saudi Arabia, European Union, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and many development partners also took part.

In his inaugural speech at the programme, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir termed the ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar army as “genocide”. “It is genocide. The entire world became vocal against it,” Fakhrul said.