Arakan News Agency
Refugees from the Rohingya minority have complained that security forces in Myanmar have sent messages via loudspeakers, ordering them to leave immediately an uninhabited area on its border with Bangladesh.
The security forces, in both Burmese and local languages of Rohingya, send letters ordering the refugees to “leave the jurisdiction of Myanmar or to prosecute”. They refers to them as “Bengalis”, treating them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, refusing to grant them citizenship and depriving them of their basic rights.
Mohamed Arif, a leader of the Rohingya refugees in the uninhabited border area, said the security forces had “broadcast times” messages he considered “very disturbing and horrifying.”
Myanmar agreed in February to stop using loudspeakers to order Rwandan refugees to leave the area and cross the border into Bangladesh, but the army withdrew some of its troops and heavy equipment from neighboring areas, where refugees complain of intimidation.
Some 700,000 Rohingyas fled Arakan to Bangladesh in August after Myanmar military operations considered the United Nations to be “ethnic cleansing.” Some 6,000 of them live in camps in Bangladesh, while others have decided to stay in the area separating the two countries.
