Bangladesh to send back Rohingyas fleeing unrest

teknaf (Bangladesh) — Bangladesh police on Wednesday detained dozens of Rohingya migrants, some of them children, and said they would return them to Myanmar where there are reports the military is burning villages and raping women.

Rohingya community leaders say there has been a sharp rise in the numbers travelling across the border into Bangladesh to escape the violence. An estimated 500 arrived overnight, using darkness to evade detection.

Up to 30,000 Rohingya, a Muslim minority group whom Myanmar does not recognise as citizens, have been forced to flee their homes, according to the United Nations, which is urging Bangladesh to open its border to them. More than 2,000 are thought to have crossed the border in recent days, despite heavy security on both sides, following the surge in violence in Myanmar.

Some said their villages had been burned down and relatives killed by the Myanmar army. One woman told how soldiers had raped and killed her daughter and said she had only narrowly escaped the same fate.

Police in the Bangladeshi border town of Cox’s Bazar said Wednesday they had detained 70 Rohingya, including women and children, and would send them back across the border.

“We nabbed them after they illegally trespassed (into Bangladesh). They will be pushed back (to Myanmar),” local police chief Shyamol Kumar Nath told AFP.

A Rohingya community leader said anyone sent back could face death.

“We have information the Myanmar army is killing those (Rohingya) people who are being pushed back from Bangladesh,” the leader said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The army has burned down their villages to ashes and killed their relatives. They will simply kill these innocents,” he told AFP.

The Myanmar army has denied the claims but has barred foreign journalists from the area around the border. —