Bangladesh Ambassador in Thailand receives Atish Dipankar Peace Gold Award

Bangladesh Ambassador to Thailand and Cambodia Saida Muna Tasneem has received the prestigious Atish Dipankar Peace Gold Award in the category of “promotion of interfaith dialogue and peace”.

Deputy Speaker of the Parliament Fazle Rabbi Miah handed her the award on behalf of Bangladesh Buddha Kristi Prochar Shongho on Thursday.

This is for the first time any Bangladesh Ambassador received this scholarly award dedicated to the distinguished 10th-century Buddhist scholar and philosopher from Bangladesh Alisha Dipankar.

As Ambassador to two predominantly Buddhist South-east Asian countries and as Bangladesh’s Permanent Representative to UNESCAP, Tasneem has been working to promote interfaith dialogue and cultural connectivity.

She also projects Bangladesh as a Buddhist Circuit Tourism Destination in these countries that combined receives more than 40 million tourists mostly to visit their Buddhist heritage.

Buddhist circuit tourism with those countries is crucial to creating stronger diplomatic ties and interfaith and cultural connections as they have a fear of predominantly Muslim countries due to a cultural disconnect.

Ambassador Tasneem is currently working on a tourism agreement between Bangladesh and Thailand to attract more tourists from Thailand through the promotion of Buddhist Circuit Tourism between the two countries.

Last 14 months Bangladesh Embassy in Thailand has issued a record number of visas to Thai Buddhist and Muslim tourists travelling to Bangladesh to visit Buddhist and Muslim heritage including Biswa Istema, according to the embassy.

The ambassador while receiving the award hoped that with greater cultural connectivity and understanding between two nations can open up other areas of economic gains including the possibility of recruitment of Bangladesh labour in Thailand which currently has Buddhist labour from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos PDR.

Ambassadors of Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam in Bangladesh were present at the award ceremony along with six other awardees from Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka and Thailand.