By: Siam Sarower Jamil
IT Correspondent
Dhaka, Oct 10: A total of 3,000 Rohingya Muslims were killed following the army operation in the Rakhine State of Myanmar since August 25, Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali said tuesday.
Tension had been brewing in the Rakhine state a month before the operation when the Myanmar government started increasing army deployment at many points of the state, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali said while addressing a programme in Dhaka this morning.
According to UN agencies, 5,20,000 of the forcibly displaced people crossed over into Bangladesh since August 25; nearly 40,000 of them arrived in the last 10 days, said a foreign ministry press release issued yesterday.
The foreign minister today alleged that Myanmar is trying to defuse the mounting international pressure by proposing to take back Rohingyas from Bangladesh.
The international pressure against Myanmar should be increased, he said at the programme in Bangladesh Institute of Strategic Studies (BISS) auditorium.
Terming the Rohingya issue “a problem of Myanmar”, the minister said the country has to solve it.
One week after a meeting with a senior minister from Myanmar, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali yesterday said Dhaka has not agreed to Naypyidaw’s proposal of following the principle and criteria of the 1992 deal to take back the forcibly displaced Myanmar national’s population.
On October 2, Myanmar formally proposed taking back the Rohingyas sheltered in Bangladesh but offered no specifics on how the repatriation of such a massive refugee population should take place.
Bangladesh, on the other hand, proposed a bilateral agreement to facilitate the repatriation process and handed over a draft of the proposed deal to Kyaw Tint Swe, union minister for the Office of the State Counsellor of the neighbouring country.