Mizzima News

Dhaka (Mizzima) - The Bangladesh Rifles, the country’s border security force has arrested 65 Rohingya, who illegally entered the country from Burma’s western Arakan state through the border, and sent them back earlier this month.

Twelve Rohingya including four women and two children, who illegally entered Bangladesh’s Teknaf region on May 2, were sent back on May 3. Another 53 Rohingya including 16 women and 13 children, who entered on May 4 were sent back on May 5.

Bangladeshi authorities sent the Rohingya back to Burma without prosecuting them.

“In the past, people arrested for entering illegally were handed over to the police and were produced in court. Now we don’t do this but send them back to Myanmar [Burma],” a soldier of the Teknaf based No. 42 (BDR), told Mizzima.

MD Kamal Hussein, a local from Teknaf said, “I had never heard of such cases before. As far as I remember, they are being sent back since the Sheikh Hasina government came to power.”

The BDR soldier said that they did not hand them over to Burmese authorities but released them on the border.

The Rohingya living in the north of Arakan State often flee to Bangladesh through the border because of persecution by local Burmese authorities.

Since 1988, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) has located and taken care to over 50,000 Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazaar district in Bangladesh.

In April 3, BDR arrested six Rohingya and sent them back to Burma.