Border Guard Bangladesh members take detained Myanmar’s Border Guard Police members to a safe place on a truck from Tambru Government Primary School at Ghumdhum of Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar on Thursday.
The Bangladesh foreign ministry said on Thursday that Naypyidaw was preparing its ship to take back the country’s escaped troops and civilian staff from bordering Cox’s Bazar through the deep sea.
No route plan for the ship was placed by Myanmar as of Thursday evening, but Bangladesh was considering allowing Cox’s Bazar jetty to ferry the escapees through the deep sea after collecting their biometric data and details, officials said.
‘The [Bangladesh] foreign ministry has been in communication with the Myanmar embassy in Dhaka and our counterpart in Myanmar to send back their Border Guard Police and military personnel as soon as possible in a safe way,’ foreign ministry spokesperson Seheli Sabrin told the weekly media briefing in Dhaka.
On Thursday, locals heard the sound of gunshots at dawn, which intensified near the Jhimonkhali area in Cox’s Bazar in the evening, causing fresh panic among the locals.
Border Guard Bangladesh deployed armoured personnel carriers along the border and intensified surveillance.
On the day, two more Myanmar troops entered Bangladesh, raising the number of escapees to 330, who included members of Myanmar’s Border Guard Police, Myanmar army, immigration officials, police, and members of other agencies.
Civilian staff and family members of some officials also fled the conflict zone in Myanmar’s Rakhine and took shelter in Bangladesh in the past five days amid heavy fighting between Myanmar forces and ethnic rebel group the Arakan Army, according to BGB headquarters.
The BGB authorities, amid tight security protocol, on Thursday relocated 100 Myanmar troops from bordering Tumbru under Bandarban to Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar.
Officials in Cox’s Bazar said that 164 Myanmar escapees were currently staying in the district, and the rest were in the Tumbru government primary school under BGB’s care or hospitals in Cox’s Bazar and Chattogram.
Bangkok-based Fortify Rights, in a statement on Thursday, called on the Bangladesh government to investigate newly arrived Myanmar Border Guard Police for their possible involvement in crimes and atrocities in Myanmar and coordinate with the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigation into crimes against Rohingya people.
‘Bangladesh should avoid any hasty returns of these officers and instead give them any aid and protection they might need and investigate their possible roles in atrocity crimes in Myanmar,’ said Matthew Smith, the chief executive officer at Fortify Rights.
‘It would be in the interest of other Myanmar military, police, and border guards to come forward and cooperate with international justice mechanisms.’
An ICC decision on November 14, 2019, authorised the ICC Office of the Prosecutor to investigate any crime related to the situation in Myanmar that was allegedly committed, at least in part, on the territory of Bangladesh.
The court has yet to issue arrest warrants related to atrocity crimes against Rohingya. The OTP’s investigation has been underway for approximately four years.
Fortify Rights stated that Bangladesh became a state party to the ICC in 2010 and previously coordinated with the court to bring alleged perpetrators from Myanmar to justice.
In September 2020, two Myanmar military soldiers—Army Privates Myo Win Tun and Zaw Naing Tun—appeared on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, requesting protection from Bangladesh authorities.
As a state party to the Rome Statute, the rights group argued Dhaka notified the ICC of the presence of the two former soldiers, who confessed to their involvement in massacres, rapes, and other crimes against Rohingya in Myanmar.
The soldiers were transferred to The Hague and are the first-ever perpetrators from Myanmar to be at the hands of the ICC.
In 2016 and 2017, the Myanmar military led ‘genocidal attacks’ on Rohingya people in Rakhine state that razed hundreds of villages, killed, raped, and tortured untold numbers, and forced more than 700,000 people into Bangladesh.
Responding to a question about the progress in sending a ship to Cox’s Bazar, foreign ministry spokesperson Seheli said that Myanmar authorities were working out a route plan to send their ship through the deep sea to take back the BGP and military personnel.
‘Myanmar authorities are preparing to send a ship to Cox’s Bazar for the repatriation of the fleeing troops from Bangladesh,’ Bangladesh ambassador to Myanmar Monwar Hossain told New Age over phone.
Monwar had a meeting with Myanmar foreign minister Than Swe, also the deputy prime minister, in Naypyidaw on Wednesday over the repatriation of troops fleeing Rakhine state.
About the repatriation of Rohingya to their homeland Myanmar, the foreign ministry spokesperson, meanwhile, said that bilateral, trilateral, regional, and multilateral efforts to begin the process of repatriation of Rohingya people sheltered in Bangladesh camps were underway as none of the more than 1.1 million forcibly displaced people could be sent back.
She said that Bangladesh’s permanent mission in New York was in communication with the United Nations Security Council over the present situation with Myanmar.
Bangladesh has been facing spillover effects of the Myanmar conflict as artillery shells landed over the week, killing at least two people in Bandarban and injuring several others.
The local administration set up shelter homes for the locals and evacuated several dozen bordering people for safety reasons.
On Thursday, Bangladesh foreign secretary Masud Bin Momen hosted a luncheon in honour of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Dhaka Committee in the city.
Envoys from Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam joined the event, where the foreign secretary highlighted some of the potential sectors for enhancing engagements with ASEAN members and sought their support towards becoming a sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN, said the foreign ministry in a statement.
Foreign ministry officials confirmed that the Myanmar envoy skipped the luncheon in light of the developing situation at the border.
New Age
