In an interview last week in New York, Ms. Hasina, in town to address the U.N. General Assembly, explained why the Rohingya crisis has struck a chord with her and many of her compatriots. The prime minister finds parallels with her own nation’s blood-drenched birth in 1971, when then East Pakistan seceded to form Bangladesh.
“What the Pakistani military did with us, with our people, was the same thing.” In Ms. Hasina’s telling, this traumatic history—official Bangladeshi accounts say the Pakistani army and its allies killed three million people in their bid to prevent independence—places a responsibility on Bangladesh to help the persecuted. “We know what suffering means,” she says.
Though the Rohingya are Muslims, and Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country, Ms. Hasina’s hospitality doesn’t come naturally. Her country holds about half as many people (163 million) as the U.S., in a flood-prone country roughly the size of Iowa. Though it has pulled itself out of extreme poverty—no longer the “basket case” Henry Kissinger dubbed it at birth—with a per capita income of $1,360, it’s not exactly wealthy either.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bangladesh-shows-compassion-1506358442