In a historic visit to Bangladesh, Pope Francis on Thursday praised the South Asian nation for giving shelter to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and he called on the international community to help resolve the humanitarian crisis.
Addressing officials, lawmakers and diplomats in Dhaka during his first day in the Bangladeshi capital, the pontiff also underscored the tradition of inter-religious harmony in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, which in recent years has seen a major terrorist attack and the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism.
“It is imperative that the international community take decisive measures to address this grave crisis, not only by working to resolve the political issues that have led to the mass displacement of people, but also by offering immediate material assistance to Bangladesh in its effort to respond effectively to urgent human needs,” the Pope said in a speech delivered in Italian at the Bangladeshi presidential palace.
Francis, the second pontiff to visit the nation of Bangladesh, landed in Dhaka in the mid- afternoon after spending the earlier part of the week in neighboring Myanmar. His was the first visit by a pope to that Buddhist-majority nation.
In Myanmar, the pontiff spoke at a historic mass of 150,000 people, where he called on Catholics to respond to hatred with “forgiveness and compassion.”
‘Refugees from Rakhine’
As he did during his stay in Myanmar, Francis refrained from using the term “Rohingya” at the start of his three-day visit to Bangladesh.
During his remarks Thursday, he described them only as “refugees from Rakhine state,” but he acknowledged the “toll of human suffering” they had endured. He also refrained from describing violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that had forced more than 620,000 Rohingya to flee to southeastern Bangladesh since late August as “ethnic cleansing” – as the United Nations and United States had done.
Pope Francis told his audience at the Bangabhaban, the president’s palace, that Bangladesh vividly displayed “the spirit of generosity and solidarity” with its humanitarian outreach to the refugees by providing them with temporary shelter and basic necessities.
“This has been done at no little sacrifice. It has also been done before the eyes of the whole world,” he said. “None of us can fail to be aware of the gravity of the situation, the immense toll of human suffering involved, and the precarious living conditions of so many of our brothers and sisters, a majority of whom are women and children, crowded in the refugee camps.”
During his remarks welcoming Pope Francis to his country, Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid accused Myanmar’s military and security forces of committing atrocities that ignited the most recent exodus of Rohingya refugees from their ancestral homes in Rakhine state. They had fled a military crackdown that followed attacks mounted on police and army posts in Rakhine by Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgents on Aug. 25.
“Thousands of them, including women and children were brutally killed, thousands of women were violated. They saw their homes burnt into ashes,” Hamid said. “They had to take shelter in Bangladesh to escape the ruthless atrocities committed by the Myanmar army.”
He said Bangladesh had welcomed the Rohingya refugees “with an open heart,” but there now was a “shared responsibility to ensure for them a safe, sound and dignified return to their own home and integration with the social, economic and political life of Myanmar.”
Growing religious fervor
On Friday, Pope Francis is scheduled to celebrate mass with about 80,000 Catholic faithful at a local park and meet with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Holy See’s embassy in Dhaka. He is also expected to meet with a group of Rohingya refugees, before returning to Rome on Saturday afternoon.
It is the first papal visit to Bangladesh – home to about 400,000 Catholics – since Pope John Paul II in 1986, and only the second in the country’s 46-year history. Pope Paul VI visited Bangladesh, when it was known as East Pakistan, a province of Pakistan, in 1970.
Lately, majority Sunni-Muslim Bangladesh has seen growing religious conservatism and a series of deadly attacks by Islamic extremists on secular writers, minorities and foreigners.
In his speech, Hamid said Bangladesh was pursuing a “zero-tolerance policy in eradicating the root causes of terrorism and violent extremism.”
“We believe that inter-faith dialogue, at all levels of the society, is important to combat such extremist trends,” he said. “We denounce this extremism, in all its forms and manifestations.” Hamid said.
The country’s Catholic community is tiny, making up about 0.2 percent of the population of about 163 million, but it has also been targeted by Muslim extremists.
Just days before the Pope’s arrival, a Catholic priest, Walter William Rosario, headmaster of a Catholic school in northwestern Natore district, went missing, according to a Christian association.
In July, 2016, the nation was rocked by a terrorist attack in which gunmen stormed an upscale café in Dhaka, leaving 29 people dead, including nine Italians and the five attackers. The extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility.
Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
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