Upcoming Paris Conference on Rohingyas of Myanmar
Bangladesh-France Friendship
Group, the National Assembly of France, will host an international conference on
the situation of 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and persecuted
Rohingya communities in Myanmar
Iranian
Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, Bangladeshi Speaker of the Parliament Dr Shirin Shamin
Chaudury and Canadian Prime Minister’s
Special Envoy Hon. Bob Rae are among the speakers
Paris,
22 May 2018
On
1 June, Bangladesh-France Friendship Group of the French National Assembly will
be hosting a one-day international conference on the situations of 1 million Rohingya
refugees in Bangladesh, as well as estimated half-million who are trapped
inside Myanmar, their country of birth and belonging.
The
host Daniele Obono, MP, who chairs the Friendship group said, “700,000
Rohingyas forcibly deported, in several weeks, by Myanmar government troops
across its western borders onto Bangladesh’s sovereign territory are facing the
very real threats of mud slides, floods, and other water-borne diseases since
the Monsoon season is fast approaching”.
Madam Obono stresses, “the international community needs to both step up
its humanitarian efforts, including significant and fast increase in financial
contributions to meet the survival needs of this world’s largest body of
refugees in a single pocket and make concerted political and diplomatic efforts
to pressurize Myanmar to end its state-directed persecution of Rohingyas”.
Myanmar
shocked the world last fall when it openly engaged for weeks in what UN
Secretary General Antonio Guterres publicly characterised as “ethnic
cleansing”. Other senior officials and
envoys such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein,
described the atrocities committed against the Rohingya Muslims in Burma as ‘a
textbook example of ethnic cleansing’.
Using the genocide framework, the UN Special Envoy for human rights in
Myanmar Professor Yanghee Lee went further and noted the ‘hallmarks of a
genocide’.
The
President of France Emanuel Macron became the first Western head of state who
publicly characterised violence against the Rohingya group as “genocide”.
International
Criminal Count's Chief (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda will appear before the
three judges at the ICC on June 20, for a closed door hearing over her official
request to the world's only permanent court on war crimes as to whether she can
investigate Myanmar's mass deportations of Rohingya people as a crime against
humanity.
Razia
Sultana, Rohingya lawyer and expert on mass rape and refugee trafficking with
the Free Rohongya Coalition, who recently testified before the Security Council
Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security, welcomes the upcoming conference on
the plight of her people.
Sultana
said, “I thank the Bangladesh-France Friendship Group and its Chairwoman Madam
Obono for organizing and hosting this very timely and important conference.” She added, “the Conference at the National
Assembly will help inform French public and lawmakers alike, about the
genocidal conditions in which our Rohingya people have been subjected to for
the last 40 years. Although mass
killings and mass deportations are most recognizable and best-known aspects of
genocide, less dramatic and less reported is the fact that our communities
inside Myanmar have been forced to exist in ghetto-like conditions and
semi-concentration camps where we are not allowed to access adequate food
intake, emergency and preventive medicine, proper schooling, or even freedom of
movements to go to rice fields or streams for food, without government
permissions.”
Among
the distinguished speakers are Dr Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace
Laureate and a leading member of the Nobel Women’s Initiative who has travelled
to Bangladesh’s refugee camps and met with the survivors of Myanmar army’s mass
rape, leading Bangladeshi lawmaker Dr Shirin Shamin Chaudury who serves as the
Speaker of the National Parliament, Canadian Prime Minister’s Special Envoy Bob
Rae who recently released his official report on Myanmar’s international crimes
against Rohingya people. They will be
joined by leading genocide scholars, international law practitioners, human
rights researchers, social scientists from Europe, N. America, Africa and Asia,
as well as Rohingya rights campaigners.
RSVP
at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/conference-on-situations-of-rohingyas-in-bangladesh-myanmar-tickets-45854033649 . All participants including the media
personnel are required to fill out the for permission to enter the National Assembly.
Conference
Program: https://freerohingyacoalition.org/en/?tribe_events=conference-on-situations-of-rohingyas-in-bangladesh-myanmar
BACKGROUNDER ON ROHINGYAS:
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