Myanmar brings 727 boatpeople to ashore in Rakhine state
Identities of the migrants still unknown; BGB on alert
Frontier guards have been put on high alert on the Myanmar border as 727 migrants, found adrift on a Malaysia-bound fishing boat six days ago, disembarked at bordering Maungdaw on Tuesday night.
The Myanmar authorities brought the boatpeople ashore in the western state of Rakhine, as the United States yesterday said it was monitoring their fate “very closely”, agencies report.
Sources in the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and locals in Maungdaw said Myanmar Navy took the boatpeople to Maungdaw police station and
kept them at a camp there after recording their names.
“I saw people crammed at a temporary camp at Hassurata School near Maungdaw Police Station with armed Myanmar Border Guard Police guarding the site,” Myanmarese businessman Abdus Sukkur told our Cox’s Bazar correspondent over the phone.
The camp is around 5.5 kilometres from the Bangladesh border.
Quoting another witness, Reuters reported that scores of migrant men were seen sitting on the ground at the landing spot near the town of Maungdaw.
Others assembled inside a warehouse, and all were being watched over by dozens of police but no aid personnel were seen at the site, the witness said.
Myanmar, according to AFP, claimed that all the rescued boatpeople to be “Bengalis” — the term it uses to describe Rohingyas — and initially threatened to send them across the border before the navy escorted them towards Rakhine.
Even yesterday, Rakhine State Secretary U Mong said that 75-80 percent of these people were Bangladeshis, though Bangladesh claims it be not more than 30 percent.
“It is impossible that only 30 percent of them were Bangladeshis. Rather, they would comprise 75 to 80 percent and most of them fled Bangladesh,” he told the BBC.
Myanmar’s Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin yesterday called Bangladesh Ambassador in Yangon, Sufiur Rahman, and asked him to repatriate the Bangladeshi nationals rescued there.
At home, the BGB high-command said the Myanmar border force on Tuesday informed them of taking the recued migrants to Maungdaw.
“Our forces were kept alert on the border following the message to ensure that they are taking the vessel with migrants using their own territory,” BGB Director General Maj Gen Aziz Ahmed told this paper yesterday.
Asked whether he was suspecting any push-in attempt by Myanmar, he replied in the negative, saying Myanmar wouldn’t have informed the BGB before moving the boatpeople ashore if they really had wanted to do so.
However, the border guards are keeping vigil on the frontier and closely monitoring the situation, he added.
Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand has seen 3,500 hungry people arrive in recent weeks in a migrant crisis that erupted after a crackdown on people-smuggling.
