Cardinals Tagle, Bo visit
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
 |
| A Rohungya refugee camp in Cox Bazar, Bangladesh (WFP/Gemma Snowdon) |
Philippine Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Caritas
Internationalis and Myanmar Cardinal Charles Bo of the Federation of Asian
Bishops Conferences (FABC), visit Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in
Bangladesh.
By Robin Gomes
Two prominent Catholic Church officials of Asia joined their
counterparts in Bangladesh on a 2-day visit to the Rohingya refugee camps in
Cox’s Bazar district of southeastern Bangladesh.
Philippine Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of
Manila, and president of Caritas Internationalis, the global confederation
of 165 national Catholic relief and development agencies, and Myanmar
Cardinal Charles Bo, Archbishop of Yangon and president of
the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences (FABC) visited the camps
on Monday.
On Sunday, they met Muhammad Abul Kalam, head of
Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission, the main state body
overseeing over one million Rohingya refugees residing in about 30 refugee
camps in Cox’s Bazar.
On both days Cardinals Tagle and Bo were accompanied by
Bangladeshi Cardinal Patrick D’Rozario of Dhaka, the president of the Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh (CBCB) and Archbishop Moses Costa of
Chittagong, CBCB secretary-general, under whose jurisdiction come the refugee
camps, and Bishop Gervas Rozario of Rajshahi, CBCP vice-president.
The Rohingya
The Rohingya are a largely Muslim ethnic group, that mostly
lives in Western Myanmar’s Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from
Bangladesh even though they have lived in the country for generations.
Denied citizenship under a nationality law passed by the
government’s military regime in 1982, they are virtually stateless and are
denied freedom of movement and other basic rights.
Bangladesh is currently hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas,
most of whom who fled to Cox’s Bazar following two deadly military crackdowns
in the Rakhine State of Myanmar in 2016 and 2017.
Government appreciates Church efforts
Abul Kalam said he was delighted by the visit of two
prominent Catholic Church leaders and he presented to them “an overview about
the crisis.”
“I conveyed to them the gigantic challenges we are facing
and told them we appreciated the various activities undertaken by Caritas for
the refugees,” Kalam told UCANEWS. “We have appealed to them to continue
the Church’s support. I believe the cardinals now have a good idea of the
various challenges the refugees are going through, especially the risks during
monsoon season as well as health and environmental problems.”
The visiting cardinals talked to several Rohingya refugee
families at Camp 4 and Camp 17 in Kutupalong, the largest of the refugee camps,
which shelters more than 400,000 Rohingya.
They also met Caritas staff and volunteers and saw the
Caritas programmes, including model shelters and the distribution of cooking
gas cylinders to refugees.
Repatriation prospects?
The visit by the two cardinals overlapped a visit by a
10-member Myanmar government delegation over the weekend that held repatriation
talks with the leaders of the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar.
The Rohingya leaders rejected the delegation’s offer to
return to Myanmar unless they are recognised as an ethnic group with
citizenship in their home country, and unless their demands for justice,
international protection and the ability to go back to their original villages
and lands are met.
Reaching out
While Cardinal Tagle visited the Rohingya refugee camps
earlier in December, it was the first by Card. Bo.
James Gomes, the regional director of Caritas Chittagong,
who coordinated the visit, explained to UCANEWS that the visit was exclusively
on “humanitarian grounds” on behalf of Caritas Internationalis and the FABC and
was not “diplomatic” in nature.
He said Cardinal Tagle’s last visit was limited to Caritas
activities in the camps. This time, he met government officials and viewed the
activities of other aid agencies as well.” He said the cardinal now has a
broader view of the challenges in the camps.
Cardinal Bo talked to Rohingya families in their “own
language” and they were elated and encouraged, he said.
Pope Francis, during his visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh in
2017, met a group of representatives of the Rohingya refugees on December 1,
during an interreligious and ecumenical meeting for peace at the Archbishop’s
House in Dhaka, Bangladesh. (Source: UCANEWS)
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét