Shawdesh desk:

Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday called upon the international community to take measures to repatriate Rohingyas to their homeland Myanmar and ensure their dignified life there.

‘The world should think that how the Rohingya crisis can be resolved so that they could return to their homeland and have a decent life there,’ she said.

The prime minister said this while a British cross party parliamentary delegation, led by vice-chair of All Party Parliamentary Group on Bangladesh and chair of APPG on Indo-British lawmaker Virendra Sharma paid a courtesy call on her at her official Ganabhaban residence in Dhaka.

PM’s speechwriter M Nazrul Islam briefed the newsmen after the meeting.

This is the first parliamentary visit from the UK since general elections were held in Bangladesh on January 7 last.

During the meeting, Sheikh Hasina said that they gave shelter to the Rohingyas after their mass exodus in face of inhuman torture in 2017.

The Myanmar had agreed to take back their nationals, but they were yet to take any measure to this end despite the fact that six years had already passed, she said.

Mentioning that the global monetary assistance decreases since the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war, she said, ‘So, Rohingyas are now becoming a huge burden for a small country like Bangladesh’.

The five-member parliamentary delegation includes Paul Scully, lawmaker, former conservative minister for tech and digital economy, Neil Coyle, lawmaker , member of UK House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, Andrew Western, lawmaker, opposition whip at the House of Commons and Dominic Moffitt, senior parliamentary assistant at House of Commons.