Author:
Publication: intelligenceonline.net
Date: May 13, 2002
URL: http://www.intelligenceonline.net/allintelligencefull.asp?id=4552452054541&recno=940
Myanmar's efforts to stop the influx
of Muslim fundamentalists from Bangladesh along their 273-km-long common
border has suffered a setback following the Khalida Zia government's refusal
to accept the border agreement signed three years ago, diplomats said.
Diplomats said that Myanmar is accusing
Bangladesh of supporting Muslim fundamentalists who are now attempting
to change the demographic profile of Shan and Chin provinces.
A similar problem caused by Bangladesh
has altered the demographic profile in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur,
Meghalaya and Mizoram that have witnessed rising political and social unrest.
Last week, a top Myanmar military
official secretly visited Dhaka to persuade Bangladesh prime minister Begum
Khalida Zia to respect the Myanmar-Bangladesh border agreement but returned
empty-handed.
Since Saturday last, both sides
have been exchanging fire to neutralise the infiltration attempts of Muslim
extremists from Bangladesh who are operating in connivance with Bangladesh
Rifles (BDR).
BDR has been pushing Muslim extremists
from Bangladesh under a well-designed plan to change the demographic profile
of the border areas of Myanmar to make a future territorial claim on them,
a diplomat said.
Both Myanmar and Bangladesh had
entered into a clandestine pact some time in 1997 to solve the long-standing
border dispute that has been going since 1958.
But the give-take agreement was
finalised in 1999 under Sheikh Hasina Wajid's regime under which each side
agreed to concede areas belonging to the other and to accept refugees who
had fled in fear of more border clashes.
Between 1998-2002, some 15,000 Myanmar
citizens quit their villages in fear of BDR reprisal but some of them also
crossed into Bangladesh as they were Muslims.
At the same time, 12,000 Bangladeshis
also left their homes for safer places.
But diplomats said that Bangladesh,
under Khalida Zia, is pushing to replace fleeing Myanmarese Muslims with
fundamentalists.
Zia is being politically supported
by Bangladeshi fundamentalist groups who want to expand Islam to Myanmar
taking advantage of the unresolved refugee issue.
Myanmar has diplomatically refused
to accept these refugees leading to the collapse of the earlier border
agreement.
