Case closed....
Myanmar, Bangladesh vow better border cooperation after clash
Jun 14, 2014 - 12:45
The UNHCR said this week it estimates more than 86,000 people have left the Rakhine area of Myanmar. PHOTO / AL JAZEERA
YANGON, June 12, 2014 (AFP) - Myanmar and Bangladeshi authorities Thursday vowed to strengthen border security and combat "illegal armed groups and criminals" following clashes on their shared frontier that Dhaka said left one of its soldiers dead.
The neighbours said they would take measures to avoid a repeat of "untoward" incidents in May, which saw gunfire exchanged between both countries' security forces, the Myanmar Police and Border Guard Bangladesh said in a joint statement.
The unrest comes amid Myanmar assertions that an insurgent group claiming links to the Rohingya Muslim minority had started to operate in the area.
Waves of sectarian conflict two years ago in Rakhine state, on the Myanmar side of the border, left the region largely segregated on religious grounds.
Myanmar provided information about the activities of the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) "inside the territory of Bangladesh which are detrimental to peace and stability along the border areas," according to the statement.
Bangladesh also affirmed it "always show zero tolerance on the issue of miscreants/illegal armed groups".
The US State Department says the RSO was active on the border in the early 1990s after a Myanmar military crackdown that caused tens of thousands of Rohingya to flee into Bangladesh.
But experts say it has long been viewed as a defunct armed force.
"They are not a new group," a senior police official told AFP, adding that the RSO were viewed as "extremists", but declining to give further information about their supposed activities.
Myanmar police officials have told AFP that they believed security forces had been attacked by members of RSO in the days leading up to the death of the Bangladesh soldier on May 28.
Gunfire erupted again on the border two days later during negotiations for the return of the man's body.
Myanmar has rejected Bangladesh claims that the dead soldier was a legitimate member of its border security force and Thursday's joint statement made no mention of the fatality.
Communal violence broke out in Rakhine in June and October 2012, leaving at least 200 people dead and around 140,000 displaced, mainly the Rohingya.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) this week said it estimates more than 86,000 people have left the area by boat from the Bay of Bengal in the last two years, including 15,000 between January and April this year alone.
The unrest sparked anti-Muslim violence that spread across Myanmar, leaving dozens more dead, and raised concerns over the former junta-run nation's reforms.
HaveeruOnline - Myanmar, Bangladesh vow better border cooperation after clash
Myanmar, Bangladesh to open crime-fighting border offices
By Aye Nyein Win and Bill O’Toole | Saturday, 14 June 2014
Myanmar and Bangladesh have reached an “in principle” agreement to open liaison offices on the border and increase security cooperation in the troubled area.
The high-level meeting in Nay Pyi Taw from June 10-12 was called in response to increasing tension and crime on the shared border, peaking recently with the killing of a Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) soldier by Myanmar Border Security Guards on May 28.
Myanmar Police Force chief Police Major General Zaw Win led the Myanmar side, with BGB director general Major General Azziz Ahmed heading the Bangladesh delegation.
The talks yielded an agreement to cooperation on nine areas, including the opening of several liaison offices. Both sides agreed to step up measures to combat the smuggling of methamphetamines and to share intelligence on armed groups operating in the area.
“This meeting is intended to get a win-win situation and to avoid a repeat of such kind of incidents in the future. It’s not about one side winning,” Police Brigadier General U Soe Myaing, from the police force’s transnational crime department, said after the meeting.
He said the border liaison offices would focus on terrorism and the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people.
“We have already built [liaison offices] on the borders with China, Thailand and Laos … we proposed it as a way of promoting border security," said Police Brigadier General Soe Myaing from trans-national boundary crime department.
At the meeting the Myanmar side agreed to share information concerning the activities of the Rohingya Solidarity Organization.
Since the killing of the Bangladeshi soldier, Myanmar officials have insisted that their troops only fired because they confused the BGB force with the RSO. The government says the insurgent group is responsible for several recent attacks along the border, including the murder of four Myanmar border police on May 18.
The Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement after last week’s meeting that the Bangladesh side agreed to “look further into the matter” of the RSO. “The Bangladesh side informed that their government also stands firm not to allow any ... illegal armed groups to use their land,” it said.
However, the allegations of RSO activity are controversial, as many experts on the region say the group has not had any real operational capacity since the 1990s. The Bangladesh embassy in Yangon told
The Myanmar Times last week that the BGB has found no evidence of RSO activity in the border area where the killing occurred.
Many groups within Myanmar, however, agree with the government’s assertions that the RSO is present. Representatives from the Arakan Liberation Party and the Myanmar Peace Center have told
The Myanmar Times that they have credible reports of RSO activity near the border area.
U Aung Win, a Muslim activist and community organiser based in Sittwe, said last week he believes the government is using the perceived RSO threat to increase military strength near Muslim communities in northern Rakhine State and isolate them further from the rest of the state.
While the RSO presence is difficult to confirm, most observers agree that crime is a growing problem on the border. The UNODC in Yangon has described smuggling along the Bangladesh border as a “serious and growing concern”, while Bangladeshi journalist Saiful Huq Omi said in a recent interview that criminal activity in the area is “getting to be huge”.
Though practical questions remain about how the two sides will implement their new agreements, Nicholas Farrelly, a research fellow from Australian National University who recently visited Bangladesh and writes regularly on Myanmar, said the discussions could be the launching point for long-term dialogue. He said such dialogue is necessary to avoid the escalation of tensions when disputes arise.
“The difficulty is that along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border there are likely to be flare-ups and skirmishes from time to time. None of Myanmar's borders are immune from such sporadic, low-level security crises,” Mr Farrelly said. “Myanmar and Bangladesh needn't be enemies but deliberate efforts will need to be made to build goodwill and trust in the long term.”
Myanmar, Bangladesh to open crime-fighting border offices