KOLKATA: Bangladesh wants Myanmar to take back Rohingya refugees and it expects India to move a resolution in the United Nations for the same, Bangladesh minister Mosharraf Hossain said here today.
It is not sustainable for a poor country like Bangladesh to carry on feeding the huge number of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar for a very long time, he said.
"We would like India to move a resolution in the United Nations to call on Myanmar to take back the Rohingya from Bangladesh as we cannot keep them lifelong with our limited resources," the Bangladesh minister for housing and public works said.
Hossain said it was due to humanitarian reasons that Bangladesh decided to give shelter to the Rohingya.
"Had we pushed them back, they would have been killed," he said.
The Bangladesh minister likened the situation in his country with the one India faced in 1971, when lakhs of people crossed over to India to escape the Pakistan Army's brutality.
"Had India pushed us back then, we would have been killed," Hossain said.
Thousands of people mainly Bengali speaking were massacred by the Pakistan Army during the liberation movement in 1971.
An estimated 6,20,000 Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh following an army crackdown on rebels in Myanmar.
At least 6,700 Rohingya Muslims, including at least 730 children under the age of five, were killed in the first month of the crackdown that started in August in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state, according to Doctors Without Borders.
An international humanitarian NGO, Doctors Without Borders, is known for its work in war-torn regions and developing countries affected by endemic diseases.
Asked about terrorist outfits using the Bangladeshi soil, the minister said: "We have a zero-tolerance policy towards terrorism." Bangladesh acts very strongly against any terrorism- related actvities on its soil, he said.
The minister is leading a 72-member delegation from his country to celebrate India's victory over Pakistan in the 1971 war and the subsequent liberation of Bangladesh on December 16.
A Mukti Joddha (freedom fighter), Hossain actively participated in the Liberation War for his country and had blown up a crucial bridge during the 1971 conflict, hitting the supply lines of the Pakistan Army in the eastern theatre, a defence official said.