DHAKA—Bangladeshi authorities on Sunday deported 123 members of the Border Guard Police and Myanmar military to Myanmar weeks after they crossed the international border and sought shelter in Bangladesh amid fighting in Rakhine State.
The Border Guard Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region headquarters’ director (operations), Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Jashim Uddin, said it was the fourth deportation phase.
Bangladesh shares a border with Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State where the ethnic Arakan Army (AA) has been fighting the regime since late last year. The AA has seized most of the state. Fighting has been going on in Maungdaw near the Bangladeshi border for months, causing junta troops and members of the Border Guard Police to take refuge in the country.
A Myanmar naval ship reached the inland port at Nunuarcchara in Cox’s Bazar from Sittwe port in Rakhine carrying 85 Bangladeshis who had been languishing in Myanmar prisons on various charges.
The BGB officials said 124 personnel—109 from the BGP and 15 army men—crossed the international border in the Teknaf-Nazirpara-Sabrang and Shah Parir Dwip areas between June 11 and Aug. 14 in fear of their lives and took shelter in Bangladesh.
The BGB offered them secured shelter, accommodation, food, clothes and medications.
BGB officials said Police Lance Corporal Kzaw Nanda of No-(4) BGP Branch died at Chattogram Medical College Hospital on Aug. 3 of what they described as “septic shock due to chronic liver disease and alcoholic cirrhosis”.
On Sept. 5, the Bangladesh authorities organized a funeral at Ramu Central Monastery in Cox’s Bazar.
The remaining 123 personnel were deported to Myanmar authorities in the presence of representatives from both countries.
At least 875 Myanmar border guards, soldiers, immigration officials and their family members crossed the international border and took shelter in Bangladeshi territory between February and September, and of them, 752 have been deported.
A Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry official said they delayed the latest deportation due to the current political situation in Bangladesh and feared that more soldiers might arrive in Bangladesh anytime soon.
On the same ship, the Myanmar authorities ferried 85 Bangladeshis who had been languishing in prisons in Rakhine.
Cox’s Bazar additional district magistrate Ataul Goni Osmani said the Bangladeshis were handed over to their families.
Teknaf’s Baharchhara Union Council member Farid Ullah said five crewmembers of a fishing trawler reached Myanmar after its engineer collapsed. Two weeks later, the family learned that they had been kept in a Myanmar prison. On Saturday, the families were informed about their arrival.
