DHAKA: Myanmar has been laying land mines across a section of its border with Bangladesh, said two government sources in Dhaka, adding that the purpose may have been to prevent the return of Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence.
Bangladesh will on Wednesday formally lodge a protest against the laying of land mines so close to the border, said the sources, who had direct knowledge of the situation but asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
An army crackdown triggered by an attack on Aug. 25 by Rohingya insurgents on Myanmar security forces has led to the killing of at least 400 people and the exodus of nearly 125,000 Rohingya to neighboring Bangladesh, leading to a major humanitarian crisis.
“They are putting the land mines in their territory along the barbed-wire fence” between a series of border pillars, said one of the sources. Both sources said Bangladesh learned about the land mines mainly through photographic evidence and informers.
“Our forces have also seen three to four groups working near the barbed wire fence, putting something into the ground,” one of the sources said. “We then confirmed with our informers that they were laying land mines.”
The sources did not clarify if the groups were in uniform, but added that they were sure they were not Rohingya insurgents.
Manzurul Hassan Khan, a Bangladesh border guard officer, told Reuters earlier that two blasts were heard on Tuesday on the Myanmar side, after two on Monday fueled speculation that Myanmar forces had laid land mines.
One boy had his left leg blown off on Tuesday near a border crossing before being brought to Bangladesh for treatment, while another boy suffered minor injuries, Khan said, adding that the blast could have been a mine explosion.
A Rohingya refugee who went to the site of the blast on Monday — on a footpath near where civilians fleeing violence are huddled in a no man’s land on the border — filmed what appeared to be a mine: a metal disc about 10 centimeters (4 inches) in diameter partially buried in the mud. He said he believed there were two more such devices buried in the ground.
Two refugees also told Reuters they saw members of the Myanmar army around the site in the immediate period preceding the Monday blasts, which occurred around 2:25 p.m.
Reuters was unable to independently verify that the planted devices were land mines and that there was any link to the Myanmar army.
Myanmar army has not commented on the blasts near the border. Zaw Htay, the spokesman for Myanmar’s national leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was not immediately available for comment.
On Monday, he told Reuters clarification was needed to determine “where did it explode, who can go there and who laid those land mines. Who can surely say those mines were not laid by the terrorists?“
A Myanmar military source said land mines were laid along the border in the 1990s to prevent trespassing and the military had since tried to remove them, but none had been planted recently.
The Bangladesh interior ministry secretary, Mostafa Kamal Uddin, did not respond to calls seeking comment.
The border pillars mentioned by the Dhaka-based sources demarcate the boundaries of the two countries, along which Myanmar has a portion of barbed wire fencing. Most of the two countries’ 217-km-long border is porous.
“They are not doing anything on Bangladeshi soil,” said one of the sources. “But we have not seen such laying of land mines in the border before.”
Myanmar, which was under military rule until recently and is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, is one of the few countries that have not signed the 1997 UN Mine Ban Treaty.
Myanmar laying land mines near Bangladesh border: govt sources in Dhaka
Myanmar laying land mines near Bangladesh border: govt sources in Dhaka
Macron says Israel PM ‘mustn’t forget his country created by UN decision’
- “Mr Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN,” Macron told the weekly French cabinet meeting
- “Therefore this is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN“
PARIS: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not forget his country was created as a result of a resolution adopted by the United Nations, French President Emmanuel Macron told cabinet on Tuesday, urging Israel to abide by UN decisions.
Tensions have increased between Netanyahu and Macron with the French leader last week insisting that stopping the export of weapons used by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon was the only way to stop the conflicts.
France has also repeatedly denounced Israeli fire against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, who include a French contingent.
“Mr Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN,” Macron told the weekly French cabinet meeting, referring to the resolution adopted in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly on the plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
“Therefore this is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN,” he added, as Israel wages a ground offensive against the Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where the UN peacekeepers are deployed.
His comments from the closed door meeting at the Elysee Palace were quoted by a participant who spoke to AFP and asked not to be named.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 states that only the Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping mission UNIFIL should be deployed in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu on Sunday called on the UN to move the 10,000 strong peacekeeping force, who include 700 French troops, deployed in south Lebanon out of “harm’s way,” saying Hezbollah was using them as “human shields.”
Later on Tuesday, Netanyahu hit back at Macron’s comments, saying the country’s founding was achieved by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, not a UN ruling.
“A reminder to the president of France: It was not the UN resolution that established the State of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the war of independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors — including from the Vichy regime in France,” Netanyahu said to a statement.
India-Canada relations reach historic lows as top diplomats expelled
- Relations fraught since the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia last year
- Canadian PM says Indian officials identified as ‘persons of interest’ in the assassination plot
NEW DELHI: Relations between India and Canada have reached a historic low as the countries expelled each other’s diplomats in an ongoing row over the killing of a Sikh separatist activist on Canadian soil.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India’s government on Monday of “supporting criminal activity against Canadians here on Canadian soil,” and the country’s Foreign Ministry announced the expulsion of six Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner.
The ministry said Canadian police had gathered evidence, which identified them as “persons of interest” in last year’s killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down in Surrey, British Columbia.
India immediately rejected the accusations as absurd, and its Ministry of External Affairs said it was expelling Canada’s acting high commissioner, his deputy, and the embassy’s four first secretaries.
Before the announcement, it also summoned the Canadian charge d’affaires and said it was withdrawing its high commissioner and “other targeted diplomats,” contradicting Canada’s statement of expulsion.
“Prime Minister Trudeau has been making these public statements repeatedly, but the evidence that he claims to possess is not available to us so we cannot make any kind of a judgment,” Dr. Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, told Arab News.
“This is the first time the relationship is so low … It has created a lot of problems and it has done damage to relationships between the two countries for the time being.”
This is not the first time India-Canada relations have been strained. In 1974, after India conducted its first nuclear weapon test, it drew outrage from Canada, which accused it of extracting plutonium from a Canadian reactor, a gift intended for peaceful use.
Ottawa subsequently suspended its support for New Delhi’s nuclear energy program.
“The relationship was also low in the 1980s with the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane and the bombing of the plane, in which many people died,” said Prof. Ronki Ram, political science lecturer at the Punjab University.
The explosion from a bomb planted by Canada-based militants killed 329 people — the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. India had warned the Canadian government about the possibility of attacks and accused the Canadian Security Intelligence Service of not acting on it.
But the current strain in relations is the first in which diplomats have been withdrawn.
“This is the first time that the relationship has gone down so low,” Ram said.
“Allegations and counter-allegations will have serious implications both internationally and domestically. The Indian government should look into the allegations and try to address them.”
Nijjar, a Sikh Canadian citizen, was gunned down in June 2023 outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, which has a significant number of Sikh residents. He was an outspoken supporter of the Khalistan movement, which calls for a separate Sikh homeland in parts of India’s Punjab state.
The movement is outlawed in India, considered a national security threat by the government, and Nijjar’s name appears on the Indian Home Ministry’s list of terrorists.
Canada has the largest population of Sikhs outside their native state of Punjab — about 770,000 or 2 percent of its entire population.
“Many Panjabi diaspora are in Canada, and a mini-Punjab has been established there,” Ram said.
“The government is taking an electoral interest in the landscape of Canada also. Those things are becoming very critical.”
Russia releases man whose daughter’s drawing opposed Ukraine fighting
- Alexei Moskalyov was convicted in March 2023 on the basis of posts that he made on a social media site
- The post came to authorities’ attention after his daughter, then age 13, made a drawing in school opposing the military operation
MOSCOW: A Russian man convicted of discrediting the military after his daughter made a drawing criticizing Russia’s military actions in Ukraine was released from prison after serving 22 months, a group that monitors political detentions said Tuesday.
Alexei Moskalyov was convicted in March 2023 on the basis of posts that he made on a social media site. The post came to authorities’ attention after his daughter, then age 13, made a drawing in school opposing the military operation.
Moskalyov was sentenced to two years in prison, but he fled. He was arrested in Belarus a day later and extradited to Russia. A court later reduced his sentence to a year and 10 months.
The OVD-Info group, which reported his release, said that Moskalyov told it that agents of the Federal Security Service questioned other inmates in his unit before he was released and suggested they were looking for cause to file new charges against him.
Since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has cracked down harshly on criticism of the military and the operation in Ukraine. Several prominent opponents of the fighting who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms — one of them to 25 years — were freed and sent out of the country in August in a widescale prisoner exchange with the West.
Canada lists pro-Palestinian group Samidoun as a ‘terrorist’ entity
- “Canada will not tolerate this type of activity,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said
OTTAWA: Canada, in coordination with the United States, on Tuesday designated the pro-Palestinian group Samidoun as a “terrorist entity” alleging that it had links with another terrorist-designated group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
“The listing of Samidoun as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code sends a strong message that Canada will not tolerate this type of activity, and will do everything in its power to counter the ongoing threat to Canada’s national security and all people in Canada,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in a statement.
Indonesia displays ancient Bali artifacts looted by Dutch during colonial rule
- In less than 2 years, the Netherlands has returned 760 stolen artifacts to Indonesia
- ‘Repatriation’ exhibit is on display at the National Museum in Jakarta until Dec. 31
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s National Museum put on display on Tuesday hundreds of artifacts recently returned from the Netherlands, the bulk of which were looted by the Dutch during the bloody colonial conquest of Bali in the early 20th century.
Titled “Repatriation,” the exhibit features 300 items from a collection of over 1,700 stolen under colonial rule that the Netherlands has returned to Indonesia since 1978. It will run until Dec. 31.
Most of the artifacts on display comprise weapons, coins, jewelry, and textiles that the Netherlands had taken in the aftermath of wars in southern Bali between 1906 and 1908, when the Dutch military attacked the region’s kingdoms and killed at least 1,000 people.
It also includes large-scale Hindu-Buddhist sculptures, such as one of a likeness of the god Ganesha, which the Netherlands looted in the mid-19th century from a 13th-century Singhasari Kingdom’s temple complex in East Java.
“We hope that the public will learn that in the past, our country wasn’t an empty land that another nation chose to settle on. There were civilizations, kingdoms, and cultures, and all these artifacts are proof of those civilizations,” Bonnie Triyana, a historian and a member of the Indonesian Repatriation Committee, told Arab News.
“As such, people can learn from our history, the origins of our country, and how diverse we are, and how much we sacrificed to gain our independence.”
Indonesia declared independence in 1945, after a long colonial history under Dutch rule that began at the end of the 16th century.
Jakarta started to campaign for the Dutch government to return stolen Indonesian artifacts in 1951, but the Netherlands only started to return them in the 1970s in small numbers. The Indonesian Repatriation Committee has made big strides since last year with the repatriation of 472 artifacts, followed by 288 such items in September.
The repatriation process has been met with criticism, as some questioned how poorer countries like Indonesia will care for the returned artifacts. But Marieke van Bommel, director-general of the Netherlands’ National Museum of World Cultures, told the New York Times last month that “the thief cannot tell the rightful owners what to do with their property.”
For Triyana, who has served as secretary of the Indonesian Repatriation Committee since 2021, the National Museum exhibit is both a “gateway” and a “bridge” to connect Indonesians with their past.
“Colonialism came to our land and committed exploitation through conquest. Not only did they exploit our wealth and resources, but they also committed violence. It is a lesson for the current generation, both that colonialism was here and its character is still around,” he said.
“We must do decolonization to scrape off the remnants of colonialism, and one way to do this is by learning history … So, this exhibit is very important because repatriation isn’t solely about returning objects taken by our colonizers, but we also want to slowly collect pieces of knowledge about our civilization.”
