Scholar Urges Int’l Community to Help Rohingya Muslims Return Home
In an interview with IQNA, Sheikh Ahmed Reza Khatib pointed to how the people and government of Bangladesh accepted Rohingya refugees.
“The Rohingya people had to run away from Myanmar when the army attacked them, burned their homes, and stole their things. They came to Bangladesh for safety, and the government and people of Bangladesh welcomed them because of their Islamic culture,” he said.
“We did our best to help them, and we built small houses for them and gave them places to work,” added the imam.
“This settlement let other Islamic countries send help to these refugees but now they want to go back to their country and their homes that have been ruined,” Khatib added.
“We tell the world that this is a human rights issue and that the world and international organizations must make it possible for them to go back to their country,” he underscored.
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar and Bangladesh. They have faced persecution and violence from the Myanmar military and some Buddhist groups for decades. They are denied citizenship and basic rights in Myanmar, which considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
More than a million Rohingya have fled to southern Bangladesh, where they live in makeshift camps that form the world's largest refugee settlement. Some Rohingya also live in a strip of land along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border called no man's land, where they are exposed to mortar shells and aerial firing from Myanmar.
The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh face many challenges, such as a lack of access to services, education, food, clean water, and proper sanitation; they are also vulnerable to natural disasters and infectious disease transmission.
The Bangladesh government has called on Myanmar to take them back, but the repatriation process has been stalled due to security and humanitarian concerns.
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