A total of 330 members of Myanmar forces including Myanmar Army Personnel, Border Guard Police (BGP) and immigration personnel who crossed the border and took shelter in Bangladesh amid the conflict between Myanmar military and armed rebel groups there, will be sent back to their country by ship on Thursday.
Confirming the matter, BGB headquarters Public Relations Officer Md Shariful Islam said under the supervision of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), 330 Myanmar nationals will be handed over to the authorities of Myanmar at 8:00am through Naval jetty ghat in Inani of Cox’s Bazar district.
They will return to their country by ship, he added.
Earlier on 13 February, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said Myanmar had agreed to take back their security force members.
“They [Myanmar] have sent a message to us saying that they will take them back by ship very soon. Hopefully, they will take their members back within 1-2 days. They have no conflict with us, no war,” the home minister said on Tuesday.
On February 12, Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud said “Work is being done for their return to Myanmar. That's our priority. They (Myanmar) want to take them back.”
He said it is not just the members of Myanmar’s Border Guard Police (BGP) and army who had fled to Bangladesh, there are some of their family members, too.
Over a hundred people entered India also and Myanmar took them back.
A tense situation has been prevailing along the border between Bandarban’s Naikhongchhari Ghumdhum and Tumbru amid fierce fighting, skirmishes and gunfire between the armed forces of the military ruler and insurgent
groups inside Myanmar for over two weeks.
Since February 4, members of Myanmar security forces had started fleeing to Bangladesh as heavy fighting continued in Myanmar between the junta forces and rebel group Arakan Army.
A total of 330 members of Myanmar Border Guard Police, army, immigration, police and other officials took refuge in Bangladesh.
Two people including a Bangladeshi woman and a Rohingya man were killed when a mortar shell from the Myanmar side landed on a kitchen at Jalpaitli village of Ghumdhum union in Naikhongchhari upazila of Bandarban.
Amid the violence across the border, several bullets and mortar shells landed on the Bangladesh side of the border.
The length of Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar is about 283 km. Major part of it falls in Bandarban and Cox’s Bazar districts.
The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government.
It is a member of the armed ethnic group alliance that recently gained strategic territory in Myanmar’s northeast.
Along with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army — operating together under the name of the Three Brotherhood Alliance — it launched a coordinated offensive on October 27, 2023, in the northern Shan state along the border with China.
Currently, the number of Rohingya registered in 33 shelter camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf is 12 lakh. Of these, 7 lakh came from Rakhine State in the months after August 25, 2017.
Even in six years of the Rohingya influx, not a single Rohingya could be sent back to Myanmar. Although repatriation was attempted twice before, it failed.