Bangladesh accused next-door Myanmar of spearheading a violent depopulation campaign to oust its ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims using the military, forcing by now majority of them to flee to Bangladesh.“For the first time in the history the majority of the Rohingya race has come to Bangladesh . . . virtually only 400,000 to 500,000 of them out of some 1800,000 Rohingyas now remain in Myanmar,” foreign minister AH Mahmood Ali told at a discussion in the capital Dhaka on Tuesday.He said the latest exodus began on August 25 with the army crackdown on Rohingyas on the plea of terrorist attack on Myanmar’s security outposts and since then some 500,000 of them crossed the border total their number to 900,000 in Bangladesh while another 400,000 of them were forced to take refuge in other countries.“The Myanmar home minister earlier revealed their plan to bring a ‘demographic balance’ and the Myanmar’s military with aggressive Buddhists and nationalist Rakhine community’s supports are trying to enforce the plan,” Ali said.He said Myanmar launched a large-scale military operation codenamed “Area Clearance” to confront “terrorists” but in fact under the cover of the announced anti-terrorism campaign they continued to carryout ruthless atrocities on ordinary Rohingyas mobilizing the troops in the region one month ahead of the crackdown.“The Myanmar government started mobilizing army at north Rakine state a month ahead of the attack on security posts on August 25h last . . . Tensions brewed in the region as they simultaneously isolated entirely some Rohingya areas and stopped supplies of food, water and daily essentials there,” he said.Ali’s comments came as fresh influx of Rohingyas began to hit Bangladesh a week after Naypyidaw agreed to take back their forcibly displaced people sending a senior minister to Dhaka to open talks amid mounting global outrage against Myanmar’s treatment of the ethnic minority population.Bangladesh foreign minister, however, feared the Myanmar proposal was actually a tactic to defuse the mounting international pressure, which he said should be kept on to force Naypyidaw to revise its approach on Rohingya issue.He said Dhaka disagreed with a Maynmar proposal for Rohingya repatriation under a verification system set out in 1992 in view of changed scenario and reality and rather proposed a joint Bangladesh-Myanmar verification strategy.“We proposed Myanmar to take back all Rohingyas without considering their arrival date into Bangladesh as well as to involve UN and international agencies like IOM and UNHCR at every level of repatriation of Rohingyas,” Ali said.On October 2, Bangladesh proposed a bilateral agreement to facilitate the repatriation process and handed over a draft of the proposed deal to visiting Myanmar’s union minister in Dhaka.Ali said Rohingya crisis remained no more a Myanmar’s internal issue and rather it became a regional catastrophe.“It’s (also) not a bilateral problem of Bangladesh and Myanmar. Bangladesh didn’t play any role in creating this crisis. The center of the crisis is in Myanmar and the solution lies with Myanmar as well,” he said.As a result of the diplomatic efforts of Bangladesh, he said the international pressure on Myanmar regarding Rohingya issue is mounting higher and higher every day.The Minister said a total of 3,000 Rohinya Muslims were killed so far since the army crackdown was launched in Rakhine State on August 25 and Human Rights Watch got the evidence of bulldozing 284 villages there.“Even the international pressure has so far failed to refrain Myanmar military from implementing its long term depopulation plan for Rohingyas,” he said.Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) organized the discussion titled “Rohingya Crisis: Review on Steps Taken by Bangladesh” at its conference room here.Ali also blasted government-sponsored Myanmar media for portraying the entire issue as “Islamist terrorism” or “radical Bangali terrorism” to confuse some of the neighbouring countries by this campaign despite repeated Bangladesh request not use the term “Bangali” to refer to the “Rohingyas”.He, however, said Bangladesh’s diplomatic efforts yielded in mobilizing international pressures on Myanmar and “it is mounting higher and higher every day”.He said the foreign ministers of European Union are scheduled to hold a meeting on October 16 in Brussels to discuss the Rohingya crisis.“We are expecting that the EU would take some crucial decision against the Myanmar Military at that meeting, “he said.The Bangladesh foreign minister expressed his gratitude to the international community for their support and urged them to continue their pressure to the Myanmar government to resolve the humanitarian crisis.State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam and Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque also spoke among others at the discussions.Source: BSS