Tension along Bangladesh-Myanmar border

Bangladesh has lodged a protest with Myanmar over what it called an unprovoked attack against its border guards by its eastern neighbour’s security forces on May 30, following an earlier exchange of fire in which one Bangladeshi guard was killed.

Dhaka has asked Myanmar for immediate withdrawal of its forces from the border as it violated a 1980 agreement, the Daily Star newspaper reported.

“We want a friendly relationship with all bordering countries. But if the Myanmar Border Guard police attack again, BGB (Border Guards Bangladesh) will give a befitting response immediately,” the BGB’s Chittagong regional commander Brig-Gen Syed Ahmed Ali was quoted by the Dhaka-based newspaper as saying.

Myanmar has given a different version of events and has told Bangladesh it would not tolerate any violation of its sovereignty or territory.

The Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had called in Myanmar’s ambassador to protest at an “unprovoked eruption of gunfire from the Myanmar border force” on May 30.

“The Myanmar Ambassador was told that a BGB team was waiting near border pillar no. 52 for identification of the dead body which was proposed by the Myanmar side. However, to the complete surprise of the BGB, Myanmar border forces suddenly started firing on the waiting BGB team without any provocation,” it said.

In response, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the first incident on May 28 involved Myanmar troops and “two suspected armed Bengalis in yellow camouflage uniform who entered into Myanmar territory” in Maungdaw township. One was killed and the other fled into Bangladesh, it said in a statement.

On Saturday, Major General Aziz Ahmed, head of BGB, told reporters that a body handed over by the Myanmar side was that of guard Mizanur Rahman, 43, who had gone missing on May 28.