Bangladesh tightens security on border
DHAKA: Bangladesh has tightened security along its frontier with Myanmar fearing a new influx of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims in the wake of reported communal riots across the border, local officials said on Friday.
Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border guards and police have been asked to be alert along the southeastern frontier amid reports of unrest in Myanmar border villages over the past few days, officials, quoted by BSS news agency, said.
The agency said available reports from Myanmar indicate that panic-stricken ethnic Rohingya Muslims from areas including Akiyab had thronged near the Bangladesh border following the clashes.
There was no independent confirmation of the report.
BDR sources at Bangladeshi frontier town Teknaf, 320 kilometers southeast of capital Dhaka, said border troops there and in nearby Nakkhyanchhari had strengthened patrols along the border on the orders of the Home Ministry.
BSS quoted district police chief of Cox’s Bazar, Towfiq Uddin Ahmed, as confirming the riot reports but added that no Muslims from Myanmar had entered into Bangladeshi territory so far.
Dhaka’s relations with Yangon soured in the early 1990s when around 250,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees flooded across the border into Bangladesh claiming atrocities by Myanmar’s military government.
Most of them were repatriated later under a Dhaka-Yangon deal and under the supervision of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
Some 20,000 of them were, however, left in two frontier camps near Teknaf still waiting repatriation.
In September a 12-member military delegation from Myanmar paid a six-day goodwill visit to Bangladesh.
The rare visit, headed by Lieutenant General Aung Htwe of the Myanmar defence ministry, followed a series of high-level exchanges between the neighbours.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has moved cautiously to build ties with Yangon since her election in 2001, visiting Myanmar in March, while Myanmar’s Senior General Than Shwe in December made the first visit to Bangladesh by a leader of the junta. —AFP