DHAKA, Feb 15 : Bangladesh on Thursday repatriated 330 of Myanmar’s paramilitary soldiers and civilians, more than a week after they fled their posts and took refuge in this country amid fierce clashes between government troops and insurgents.
The Myanmar paramilitary personnel, army troops and civil officials fled their posts and offices in February first week from their bordering Rakhine state, many with weapons and after their arrival, they were disarmed and kept in the Border Guard Bangladesh custody.
“They were extended makeshift refuge on humanitarian grounds as they crossed the border to save their lives. But no more intrusion will be allowed in future,” paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) chief Major General Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui told newspersons at the repatriation site.
Officials and witnesses said the repatriation took place through the sea under the supervision of BGB, aided by the Bangladesh Navy, coastguard and other law enforcement agencies while a delegation of Myanmar’s paramilitary Border Guard Police (BGP) received them.
Myanmar BGP delegation leader, Lieutenant Colonel Myo Thura Naung received them at a makeshift canopy at the Inani beach after a roll call and identification by the junta-run country’s ambassador in Dhaka Aung Kyaw Moe.
Out of the 330 Myanmar nationals, 302 were BGP personnel while others were regular military soldiers, immigration officials and their family members, who got onboard Bangladesh tourist cruisers at a navy jetty at the Inani beach.
The cruise ships took them to the deep sea to be transferred to a Myanmar Navy ship.
The five-member BGP delegation came to Bangladesh territory earlier on Thursday.
Earlier, on February 5, two people, a Bangladeshi woman and a Rohingya man from Myanmar, were killed in Bangladesh as mortar shells fired from Myanmar landed in a village across the border amid escalated battles between Myanmar’s government troops and rebel Arakan Army.
Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar stretches 271 kilometres, from the tri-point with India in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south.
Bangladesh played a critical role in over a million Muslim minority Rohingyas, who fled their home in Rakhine and took refuge in Bangladesh to evade persecution, particularly after a 2017 army crackdown. But the current crisis has little to do with the Rohingyas.
The country won praise for the handling of the world’s biggest refugee crisis while Dhaka repeatedly sought their repatriation to their homeland in Rakhine saying the Rohingyas were causing economic, social, security and environmental problems.
But Dhaka so far received little effective response from the Myanmar side for the Rohingya repatriation.
Meanwhile, as the influx of Myanmar government soldiers continued for the third consecutive day, armed conflict in Myanmar also killed people inside Bangladesh and forced people in the frontier to flee their homes, Dhaka summoned the Myanmar envoy.
Foreign minister Hassan Mahmud later said a strong note protest was handed over to the envoy due to the casualties and disturbances in Bangladesh caused by the armed conflicts on the Myanmar side of the border.
“We told him, this is completely unacceptable,” Mahmud said while officials said the envoy assured Dhaka of conveying his government the Bangladesh protest. (PTI)
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