Bangladesh has been in "tight spot" after Saudi Arabia has requested it to issue passports to 300,000 Rohingyas living in the kingdom, which already has almost 2,200,000 Bangladeshis.
If executed, experts fear, the move may cost the employment of a massive number of Bangladeshis in the gulf nation. They also find the call “absolutely not friendly”.
In a recent courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka, Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Nasser bin Abdulaziz Al-Dawood made the request. The Saudi minister also sat with Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal.
Foreign ministry sources said out of the 300,000 Rohingyas in Saudi Arabia, as many as 60,000 are Bangladeshi passport holders.
But the Bangladesh government is not renewing those. In this regard, Saudi government is pushing for the entire 300,000 Rohingyas to be issued Bangladeshi passports.
Experts say that if Dhaka considers or accepts Riyadh’s request to this end, Bangladesh will officially recognize another 300,000 Rohingyas as its citizens.
And this may greatly hinder their repatriation process.
Former foreign secretary and the premier’s special envoy, Waliur Rahman, told thereport.live that the issuance of the passports means Bangladesh gives them citizenship.
“There will be no way to stop them from returning to Bangladesh once they are given the passports and their stay or job tenure is over,” he said.
“And urging Bangladesh to issue the passports is not a friendly approach by Saudi Arabia at all,” he maintained.
Despite being Bangladesh’s largest labour market, Saudi Arabia’s call for passport issuance will hamper the return of Rohingyas to Myanmar, the diplomat feared.
According to historic records, a whopping 500,000 Rohingyas fled the Myanmar army’s crackdown and took refuge in Saudi Arabia between 1976 and 1979.
Half of them obtained Pakistani passports while the rest got Bangladeshi ones.
Pakistan mentioned “Myanmar citizen” in the passports it had issued, but Bangladesh kept the “citizen” category empty.
In spite of this fact, Saudi Arabia identified the Rohingyas as Bangladeshi nationals. And now Riyadh wants Dhaka to give Bangladeshi citizenship by renewing the passports.
On the matter, former foreign secretary Md Shahidul Haque said Bangladesh is in double trouble as he terms the request by the Saudi government as illogical.
“At one hand, Bangladesh has a massive labour market. If Dhaka rejects the call, there is a chance to lose it,” he said.
Shahidul went on to say that there will be a legal obligation to recognize the Rohingyas as Bangladeshis if given the passports.
He suggested that Dhaka carefully deal with the matter.
