Nobel laureate and new leader Muhammad Yunus said in his first major policy address on Sunday that Bangladesh would continue to support both its huge Rohingya refugee population and its vital garment trade.
Yunus, 84, returned from Europe this month after a student-led revolution to take on the crucial task of pushing through democratic reforms in a country plagued by institutional collapse.
His predecessor, 76-year-old Sheikh Hasina, suddenly fled the country by helicopter a few days ago after 15 years of harsh rule.
Laying out his priorities before diplomats and UN representatives, Yunus pledged continuity on two of the biggest policy challenges of his caretaker administration.
“Our government will continue to provide assistance to more than one million Rohingya people taking refuge in Bangladesh,” Yunus said.
“We need continued efforts of the international community to ensure humanitarian action for the Rohingya and their return to their homeland Myanmar with safety, dignity and full rights,” he said.
Nearly one million Rohingya refugees live in Bangladesh.
Most of them fled following a military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 that is now the subject of a genocide investigation by a UN court.
Weeks of unrest and massive protests to oust Hasina from power also caused widespread disruption in the country’s key textile industry, with suppliers shifting their orders out of the country.
“We will not tolerate any attempt to disrupt the global textile supply chain, in which we are a major player,” Yunus said.
Bangladesh’s 3,500 garment factories account for about 85 percent of its $55 billion annual exports.
Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his pioneering work in microfinance, credited with helping lift millions of Bangladeshis out of poverty.
He has taken over as “chief adviser” of the caretaker administration – which comprises all civilians except two retired generals – and has said he wants to hold elections “within a few months”.
Before she stepped down, Hasina’s government was accused of widespread human rights abuses, including mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
On August 5, when protesters stormed the capital Dhaka to oust her, she fled the country to neighbouring India, her government’s biggest political patron and benefactor.
‘Hundreds of people were killed’
“Millions of our brave students and people stood up against the brutal dictatorship of Sheikh Hasina,” Yunus said in his address.
“She fled the country, but only after security forces and her party’s student wing perpetrated one of the worst civilian massacres since the country’s independence,” he said.
“Hundreds were killed, thousands were injured.”
More than 450 people were killed between the start of a police crackdown on student protests and his ouster three weeks later.
‘Dictatorship’
A UN fact-finding mission is due to arrive in Bangladesh soon to investigate the “atrocities” that took place during that period.
“We want an impartial and internationally credible investigation into this massacre,” Yunus said on Sunday.
“We will provide whatever assistance the UN investigators require.”
Yunus recommitted that “we will hold free and fair elections as soon as we have fulfilled our obligations to make crucial reforms to our electoral commission, judiciary, civil administration, security forces and media.”
He said, “Sheikh Hasina’s dictatorship destroyed every institution of the country.”
He said his administration would “make sincere efforts to promote national reconciliation”.
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