July 31, 2018
Sugata Bose asks a Question on Rohingya refugee crisis
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Madam Speaker, I am deeply saddened by the reply given by the hon Home Minister on the floor of this House. What has happened to our country Bharat Varsh, Madam Speaker, which has a millennia-old tradition to give shelter to persecuted people from all over the world? We have 40,000 Rohingya refugees in our country. There are more than 9 lakh Rohingyas refugees in Bangladesh. Our External Affairs Ministry has been conducting, since September of 2017, Operation Insaniyat in refugee camps in Coxe’s Bazar. Are we only going to export our insaniyat to Bangladesh, will we not show some insaniyat inside our own country? Our CM Mamata Banerjee said last year that we have to deal with this situation on humanitarian grounds.
Madam, may I ask a question? The answer given is that our Government has emphasised the need of safe, speedy and sustainable return of these displaced persons. And the UN has said that not one person has been able to return and July 4, the UN Secretary General Tony Antonio Guterres shared heart-breaking accounts of suffering and he said ‘nothing could have prepared me for the scale of the prices and the extent of suffering’.
I would like to ask our Home Minister, is our country prepared to abide by all international refugee laws and also honour the tradition of India to give shelter to all persecuted people, especially refugees. Thank you very much.
