Myanmar Gave Us List of Rohingya Rebels, Bangladesh Home Minister Says

Myanmar has given Bangladesh a list of hundreds of suspected Rohingya insurgents believed to be hiding out across the border, but security sweeps have netted no rebels thus far, the Bangladeshi home minister told BenarNews in an interview this week.

Myanmar officials furnished the list of names of alleged members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) during bilateral meetings in Naypyidaw late last month and asked Bangladesh to help them catch them, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said.

“At the meeting, Myanmar handed us a list of suspected ARSA members. The list contained over 500 names who were allegedly ARSA members. They said the ARSA members were hiding across the border,” the minister said.

He noted that the list contained names but lacked other information about the suspects such as birth date, height, parents’ names, profession and place of residence.

Khan was among officials attending talks in Myanmar’s capital on Oct. 24 that aimed to reduce tensions over a massive and unprecedented influx of Rohingya refugees into southeastern Bangladesh from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since the end of August.

After the bilateral talks, Bangladeshi authorities have searched refugee settlements in the southeast where more than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are now concentrated, but they are having a difficult time finding ARSA rebels, Khan said.

“We need additional information about them,” he said.

“We will not allow any terrorists and militants on our land, I told them. But are only names enough to find them from hundreds of thousands of people?” the home minister told Benar.

BenarNews could not immediately verify Khan’s account of the request with Myanmar government officials.