Myanmar border guards reportedly torch three Rohingya houses at Tambru

Soldiers of Myanmar’s Border Guard Police (BGP) have reportedly torched three abandoned houses of the Rohingyas in a village near the no man’s land at Tambru border point, adjacent to Bangladesh’s Konarpara border area. The arson incident took place around 7:30pm on Monday, Dil Mohammad, a leader of Rohingya refugees living in the no man’s land, told the Dhaka Tribune. Residents had fled abandoning those houses after a military crackdown started in August 25 last year. In the past few days, Myanmar military personnel were also seen building bunkers on their side at Tambru. A high official of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), requesting anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune: "Myanmar Army has been carrying out such threatening behaviour and shooting at the Rohingyas sheltered along the borderline." "They are using these threatening tactics to scare the displaced people just before the repatriation process,” he added. After the Myanmar army crackdown in Rakhine started, thousands of members of the ethnic minority group were killed and numerous Rohingya villages in the state torched and destroyed by the Myanmar security forces and Mogh extremists. Since then, over 6,500 Rohingya people from Tambru, Medipara, Raimongkhali, Deybuinna, Laipuiya, Ponduiya, Khuyangcipong villages and Maungdaw’s Panirchora moved to the Tambru no man’s land and had been living there, a place that is adjacent to Konarpara border under Naikhongchhari’s Ghumdum union in Bandarban. The Rohingyas living there have been demonstrating in protest against the repatriation process demanding guarantee of security and rights beforehand from the Myanmar government. They demanded deployment of UN peacekeeping force in Rakhine state’s Rohingya majority areas and recognition of the Rohingyas as citizens of Myanmar. They also want international organizations and media to be engaged in the repatriation process and monitor the overall situation, along with the full implementation of the recommendations made in the report of the Kofi Anan-led Advisory Commission on Rakhine State and the five-point proposal of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.