Chief Adviser Professor Dr Muhammad Yunus’ speech in Chattorgam dialect at a pre-iftar event joined by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres enthralled tens of thousands of Rohingyas at their makeshift camps in this southeastern district, said the representatives of the forcibly displaced people.
Rohingyas are familiar with the dialect of Chattorgam while Yunus himself was born and brought up in the southeastern district, which until recent years was called Chittagong and its residents as Chittagonians or Chatgaiahs.
The chief adviser’s ancestry earned him the scope to address the Rohingyas in a dialect they are familiar with coinciding with the UN chief’s presence.
The background Rohingya leaders said Yunus spoke more than 5 minutes in the dialect of Chattorgam, giving the audience immense joy and excitement while civic figures of the district said the gesture gave the chief adviser a scope to reach out to the Rohingyas in an appropriate manner and explain the ground reality in a convincing way.
Yunus, they said, through his dialect managed to build up a direct link between the Rohingyas and the top representative of world community.
The accession when the UN chief joined the iftar with Rohingyas in a visible expression of his attachment with them when the forcibly displaced ethnic minority people were able to tell him what they thought.
Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights chairman Mohammad Jobayer said after taking shelter to Bangladesh to save their lives in 2017, many big local and foreign leaders have visited the Rohingya camps.
But the language barrier debarred them from telling them clearly what they wanted to say.
On Friday, they were able to tell their thoughts to “Professor Muhammad Yunus Sir and the people of the Rohingya community understood the speech he gave”, he said and hoped this time it will go a long way in solving the Rohingya problem.
Welcoming the speech, Rohingya community leader Ali Hossain of Camp-1 said he got the opportunity to tell two world leaders about the problems that they could not talk about for 8 years since taking refuge in Bangladesh and this has been only possible because of Yunus.
President of ‘Cox's Bazar Civil Society’ Abu Morshed Chowdhury Khoka said although the language of the Rohingyas is somewhat different from the Chattogram dialect, every person in Rohingya community understood the speech.
“This was very positive because through the speech, the Chief Adviser created a connection with Rohingyas which no local or foreign leader could do in the last 8 years,” he said.
Cox's Bazar Hotel and Guest House Owners Association President Abul Kashem Sikder said it seemed that Cox's Bazar or the Rohingya problem moved forward a few steps toward a solution, because there was no opportunity to speak in the dialect with any local or foreign leader in the past.
Through this, the repatriation of the Rohingya to their homeland Myanmar will be possible quickly by establishing direct connections with world leaders, he observed.
