Military buildup near Bangladesh border for internal security, Myanmar claims

Myanmar claims it has deployed heavily armed additional forces at the border near a Rohingya camp in no man’s land ‘as part of regular patrol to ensure internal security’, and Bangladesh is ‘not the target’.

The Border Guard Police or BGP of Myanmar and Border Guard Bangladesh or BGB held a flag meeting at the Ghumdhum border in Bandarban’s Naikkhyangchharhi on Friday afternoon following tension over the issue.

Hours after the foreign ministry summoned the Myanmar ambassador to protest against the military buildup on Thursday afternoon, the Myanmar forces fired shots, escalating the tensions further.

BGB Battalion Commander Lt Col Manjurul Hasan, who led the team at the talks on Friday, said, “Myanmar claimed they deployed army soldiers and border guards near the border with heavy weaponry in different times for internal security.”

BGP, however, denied firing any shots on Friday night when BGB asked them to inform Bangladesh before taking any such step in the future, Manjurul said.

“They assured us of taking back the Rohingyas camped in the zero line. They said the joint working committee on the repatriation of the Rohingyas would decide how and when the process will start,” he added.

The BGB team walked to the area of a bridge linking the two countries in the afternoon and held the meeting at a tent set up on the Tambru border.

Around 17,000 Rohingyas have been living in no man’s land between the countries, including nearly 7,000 in Tambru, since Myanmar launched a military operation which international community dubbed “ethnic cleansing” in the Rakhine State on Aug 25 last year.

Officials at Bandarban district administration and BGB said the Myanmar authorities have been asking the Rohingyas to leave the no man’s land in different ways since the beginning of February.

On Thursday morning, a huge number of BGP personnel took the position within a few hundred metres from the border with heavy weaponry.

They asked the Rohingyas to move away from the no man’s land, using loudspeaker for hours and scaring the members of the ethnic minority.

Rohingya representatives at the camp said the BGP personnel aimed their weapons at the Rohingyas in the morning and asked them to leave the area.

They alleged the Myanmar soldiers also tried to enter the Rohingya camp by crossing the barbed-wire fence around 8pm and fired the shots shortly afterwards.

The members of Myanmar’s BGP and army were throwing bottles of alcoholic drink and brickbats onto their shanties for some days, the Rohingyas said.

The US, which has been harshly criticising Myanmar since it launched the army operation last year, said it was watching the situation ‘carefully and closely’.