Arakan News Agency
Myanmar border guards fatally shot a Bangladeshi fisherman and wounded another Monday as they fired at a boat in a river that separates the two countries, an eyewitness and police in Bangladesh told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
The shooting marked the second reported brush between Bangladeshi fishermen and Myanmar authorities since late December in waters that lie close to the Myanmar-Bangladesh border.
The Naaf River that runs along the border has been tense lately. Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees have poured into southeastern Bangladesh by boat in recent months as they fled killings, rapes, the torching of homes and other abuses allegedly committed against their communities as part of a military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
“We were inside Bangladesh waters. At around 8:30 a.m. they came into our waters by a speed boat and started firing at us,” one of the surviving fishermen, Nur Hakim, told BenarNews by phone on Monday night, referring to Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP).
Two other fisherman in the boat were injured by the gunfire, including Nurul Amin who later died at a hospital in Cox’s Bazar, a district on the Bangladeshi side of the river, Hakim said.
“I lay in the boat to save my life,” the fisherman said, adding that he sailed with his two wounded comrades to shore after four BGP officers departed in their boat.
“We want justice; should we be killed in this way for fishing in our waters?” he said.
