Rocked and displaced by the ongoing atrocities by Myanmar’s army, Rohingya refugees with nowhere to go are running helter-skelter in “no man’s land” on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, with both Border Guard Police (BGP) in Myanmar and Border Guard Bangladesh stepping up vigil on their respective sides.
Unable to bear the persistent persecution, the Rohingya Muslims are feeling homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state leaving behind their hard-earned valuables and property. And, many are losing their beloved ones when rushing to escape the brutalities, a scene prevalent all over the border.
Visiting the Jolpaibania border point in Bandarban’s Naikhongchhari upazila on Saturday, the Dhaka Tribune correspondent found over 500 refugees, including women and children, stiff from sitting squeezed up against one another in a bamboo orchard owned by one Nurul Islam.
Among them is Moshtaque Ahmed, a resident of Dekibonia village in Rakhine.
The 70-year old said: “I have four sons and six daughters. Army men picked one of my sons up. He will never return home because I am sure that they have already killed him.
“We fled to Bangladesh in terror of our lives.”
A woman by the name of Rohina Akter said a group of army men picked his husband up, calling him a member of Rohingya insurgent group Harakah al-Yaqin (Faith Movement).
Claiming innocence for her husband, she said: “My husband is not involved in the group. They [army men] mercilessly beat my husband before my eyes, inflicting severe injuries on him.”
Speaking from the other side of the border, Nurul Bashar and Mujibur Rahman said a military helicopter arrived at Dekibonia army and BGP camps on Saturday around 2pm. After the helicopter departed at 3pm, army personnel accompanied by BGP and locals swooped on Rohingya-inhabited Dekibonia, Chakkata, Fakirapara and other adjacent villages, launching a blanket attack on the villagers.
According to sources in Rakhine, security forces have been indiscriminately firing on the Rohingyas since the Friday incident.
In addition to setting fire to the Rohingyas’ property, they are targeting girls and young women, said the sources, adding that the Rakhine state will soon be cleansed of Muslims if the persecution continues.
Narrating the brutalities, witnesses said the army men shoot youths to death after hanging them upside down. Some of non-Muslim Rakhine youths have joined the military forces in their campaign of assault on the Muslim minority.
On Friday, at least 89 people including a dozen security force members were killed as Rohingya insurgents reportedly besieged border posts in troubled Rakhine state, prompting the army to launch a new crackdown on the Rohingyas and thus triggering a fresh exodus of refugees to Bangladesh.
Earlier, over 70,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh in the aftermath of the October 9, 2016 attacks on security posts, joining as many as 500,000 estimated refugees who have come to Bangladesh during decades of persecution in their motherland.
The previous counterinsurgency operation ceased in mid-February this year, ending a four-month sweep that the UN said may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.
Thursday, June 04, 2026
