China’s support to resolve Rohingya crisis sought

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Diplomatic Correspondent :
Foreign Minister AK Abdul Mannan on Thursday stressed the need for strong support of China for resolving the protracted Rohingya crisis with early repatriation of the displaced people.
China’s strong support would be necessary so that ‘Myanmar moves in the right direction for resolving the Rohingya crisis,’ the minister told Chinese Ambassador Zhang Zuo who called on him at the Foreign Ministry on Thursday.  
They shared their concerns that protracted presence of Rohingya people
in Bangladesh ‘may disrupt the regional peace and stability as vested quarters are trying to radicalise the displaced people’, the ministry said in a press release.
The Foreign Minister appreciated the Chinese humanitarian assistance for the displaced people of Rakhine State. Bangladesh is now hosting over 1.2 million Rohingyas.
The Foreign Minister also appreciated the fact that many bilateral instruments worth billions of dollar investment were signed during Xi Jinping’s visit to Bangladesh in 2016 when the bilateral relationship got elevated to strategic partnership.
Zhang asserted that China is willing to play constructive role to realise repatriation of displaced people.
China would facilitate communication between Bangladesh and Myanmar to find a practical solution of the crisis, he said.
The ambassador also underlined the importance of the bilateral consultation mechanisms to steer the practical cooperation between the two countries. China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
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 Myanmar military in Rakhine, what the United Nations denounced as ethnic cleansing and genocide, beginning from August 25, 2017.
The ongoing Rohingya influx took the number of undocumented Myanmar nationals and registered refugees in Bangladesh to about 1.2 million according to estimates by UN agencies and Bangladesh authorities.
The UNHCR and the government failed in their first attempt for sending the first batch of Rohingya people on November 15 last year as nobody agreed to go back with referring to absence of environment for return in Rakhine.

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