Editorial
Dhaka must ask Delhi to stop BSF instigations in the border
The latest intrusion of Indian nationals into Bangladesh territory, and that too to till the crops land of Bangladesh at the Shreepur border of Jaintapur in Sylhet Friday morning is really ominous. The incident took place 17 hours after a high-level flag meeting between the Bangladesh Rifles and the Border Security Force (BSF) of India where they agreed to keep peace in the border. The repeated intrusion tends to indicate that the Indian guards are out to instigate the BDR and consequently the Bangladeshi civilians are concerned about confrontation.
According to a report front-paged in New Age on Saturday, some 40 Indians armed with bows and arrows and other sharp weapons trespassed into Bangladesh at about 9:45am and started tilling cropland at Minartila near the BDR outpost. Although the BDR soldiers asked the Indian Khasia tribesmen not to till the cropland, the Indians did not pay any heed to the request. The BSF soldiers not only did not ask their fellow countrymen to stop tilling the Bangladesh land, but in the afternoon they took position in the bankers they had dug along a 20km border stretch after a series of clashes with the Bangladesh border guards during June 4–15. The mysterious silence of the Indian border guards over the incident of trespass reinforces the suspicion that India, although a huge nation, aspires to grab land from its neighbouring countries on the one hand and intends to undermine the peaceful foreign policies of both the countries on the other.
Needless to say, India and its BSF have consistently defied all agreements and conventions, bilateral and multilateral, including the last joint communiqué signed between the prime ministers of two countries early this year that assured Bangladeshis of border peace. But the Indians carried on with all kinds of aggressive and intrusive activities over the past months and years. The BSF atrocities have reached such proportions that the government of Bangladesh has been forced to enforce a dusk-to-dawn ban on movement of Bangladeshi civilians within 150 metres of the zero point inside Bangladesh territory, to prevent loss of lives.
In the past four months or so, the BSF has appeared rather hell bent on instigating trouble on its border with Bangladesh. There have been several incidents of intrusion of Indian nationals into Bangladesh territory, apparently at the instigation of the BSF, one of which resulted in exchange of more than 1,000 gunshots between the border guards of the two countries. Moreover, the BSF even kidnapped a BDR soldier at gunpoint and detained him for more than 10 hours. Besides, in the first five months of the calendar year, at least 24 Bangladeshis have been killed by the BSF.
The Awami League-led government has repeatedly claimed that it has been successful in persuading its Indian counterpart to resolve all the outstanding problems through peaceful dialogues. But the ground reality tends to indicate otherwise. India has neither taken any steps to resolve the longstanding problems, nor has even shown any sign of resolving them in the near future. Rather, Indian nationals at the backing of its border forces have tried, more than once in a month, to till Bangladeshi crops land! But the government in Dhaka has not been seen/heard to have registered any serious protests with its counterpart in Delhi, leaving the issue of territorial sovereignty in the hands of poorly equipped BDR soldiers. The government must come up with an unequivocal statement on the BSF atrocities on the border and tell the people as to how it plans to redress the issue effectively. The Indian government, on the other hand, needs to realise that by way of repeated BSF intrusion and killing Bangladeshis, it is continuously fuelling an 'anti-India' sentiment across Bangladesh to the detriment of the interests of the people of both the countries.
We, therefore, suggest that Dhaka takes up the issue seriously with Delhi and Delhi asks its border guards to stop killing of Bangladeshis and prevent its citizens from intrusion into Bangladesh territories – let alone tilling land for the sake of mutual interests.
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