ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a platform of current and former Southeast Asian lawmakers, on Wednesday proposed an international conference involving Bangladesh, China, and ASEAN countries to resolve the Rohingya crisis.
The APHR made the proposal when a delegation from the advocacy group called on chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus at the state guest house Jamuna, according to a press release issued by the Chief Adviser鈥檚 Office.
Reiterating his call for Bangladesh to be included as a member of the regional body, the chief adviser聽 sought ASEAN co-operation to resolve the Rohingya crisis.聽
鈥榃e want to be a sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN. This is one thing we keep repeating. Since we are not part of ASEAN, we cannot bring the issue to ASEAN. It is important for us because the issue needs to be addressed,鈥� Yunus told the delegation.
He urged the APHR to form an ASEAN parliamentary group and Bangladesh to join it as an invitee, saying that it was also important for Bangladesh because the Rohingya issue had become a burden for it. 鈥楥reate a platform of ASEAN which does not exist now. ASEAN should tell the rest of the world about the crisis we are facing,鈥� the chief adviser said.
鈥楾wo things should be done on a priority basis. One is an ASEAN-led effort to raise funds for the Rohingyas. The other is a high-level ASEAN-Bangladesh-China political summit to resolve the Rohingya issues,鈥� said Charles Santiago, a former member of the House of Representatives of Malaysia, and co-chairperson of APHR.
ASEAN parliamentarians visited Rohingya camps in 2018 and have since been following it, he said.
鈥榃e are always trying to flag the Rohingya issue as an ASEAN issue. But I must confess, for the last two to three years, we had been quiet because we were focusing on restoring democracy in Myanmar,鈥� he said.
Wong Chen, member of the House of Representatives in Malaysia, Raoul Manuel, former member of the Congress in the Philippines, and Chonlathan Supphaiboonlerd, the programme director of APHR, were among others present on the occasion.
A high-level conference is set to be held in New York on September 30 during the United Nations General Assembly to draw the attention of the international community to the protracted Rohingya crisis, as Bangladesh is hosting around 13 lakh displaced Rohingyas from the Rakhine state of Myanmar, around 7.5 lakh of them fled the military crackdown in August 2017.
Not a single Rohingya could be sent back to their homeland since the large-scale influx.