Dhaka sends back 70 Rohingya despite violence

COx’s BazaR: Bangladesh detained and forcibly returned 70 Rohingya migrants to Myanmar, police said, just hours after Myanmarese troops on the other side of the border opened fire on people fleeing the country.

Police intercepted the Rohingya late Saturday after they crossed the “zero line” border zone, where Myanmar soldiers earlier fired mortars and machine guns at villagers making the dangerous dash from the northern state of Rakhine into Bangladesh.

The villagers were caught four kilometres inside Bangladeshi territory en route to a refugee camp in Kutupalong, where thousands of Rohingya already live in squalid conditions, said local police chief Abul Khaer.

“All 70 were detained and later pushed back to Myanmar by the border guards,” Khaer said.

Police said some of those detained had entered Bangladesh via the Ghumdhum border area – where the Myanmar forces unleashed the barrage of fire just hours earlier.

“They were pleading with us not to send them back to Myanmar,” said one policeman on condition of anonymity.

Rakhine has become a hotbed of religious hatred focused on the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, who are reviled and spurned as illegal immigrants in Buddhistmajority Myanmar.

Despite years of persecution, the Rohingya largely eschewed violence.

But in October, a new militant group – the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) – attacked a string of Myanmar border posts, sparking a military crackdown that left scores dead and forced 87,000 people to flee to Bangladesh.

The latest violence erupted early on Friday as scores of men, purportedly from ARSA, ambushed Myanmar police posts.

Using knives, some guns and homemade explosives, they killed at least a dozen security force members.

Remote villages along the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar have seen fierce fighting since then between suspected militants and Myanmar security forces.

The violence has left a total of more than 100 dead since Friday and forced thousands of Rohingya to flee towards Bangladesh.

But authorities there have refused to let most of them in, with thousands of people – mainly women and children – stranded along the border zone.

The Bangladeshi government has instructed local officials in Cox’s Bazar, the district bordering Myanmar that is home to several large refugee camps, not to allow any “illegal entry” by Rohingya, Abdur Rahman, a senior government official said. — AFP