Foreigners’ advice sometimes seems so foolish: Foreign minister

Foreign minister AK Abdul Momen on Wednesday said foreigners have a very limited concept about Bangladesh and when they advise us, sometimes these seem to be so foolish.

Bangladesh is a one of the countries where people sacrificed their blood for democracy, human rights and dignity, he said while replying to queries from newspersons after a view-exchange meeting on community clinic at the civil surgeon office in Sylhet.

Abdul Momen said, “70-80 per cent of people vote during election in Bangladesh while those who advise us on election, 25-30 per cent of their people cast vote in election. Why do they talk too much? They cannot find candidates to contest election while 100 people vie for a councillor post in our country.”

The minister alleged media are backing foreigners more. He said, “Stop giving coverage to foreigners and they think they are kings of this country, they want to collect information and we don’t have any problem in it. But, media don’t have any headache on it. We hide nothing and do nothing in secret. There are 45 private television channels, about 12,500 newspapers and 1,800 monthly magazines in the country. Such happens nowhere in the world.”

“Unrest destroys a country like Libya and Syria. A quarter in our country does not want peace and if unrest breaks out, they gain personally. Unfortunately, many opposition leaders do not want that the country marches on the highway of development. They want to create unrest by giving false and fabricated information to various people and if unrest breaks out, they will face consequence,” he added.