The foreign affairs ministry on Saturday summoned Myanmar Ambassador in Dhaka U Lwin Oo over a map the neighbouring country drew, tending to show the St Martin’s as a territorial island of theirs, reports BSS.
“As the Myanmar ambassador came, we handed him over a strong protest note over the map and demanded an immediate explanation from Naypyidaw over its false claim,” a foreign ministry official familiar with the development told BSS.
He said Dhaka feared an “ulterior motive” behind the drawing of the map by Myanmar as the St Martin’s island was never part of Myanmar or Burma since the British period and “until now no dispute even raised involving its territorial ownership”.
The official said foreign ministry’s Maritime Affairs Unit Secretary Rear Admiral (retd) M Khurshed Alam called Lwin Oo and told him that when Burma got separated from British-India, St Martin’s remained part of the then undivided India.
“During the subsequent 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, St Martin’s automatically became part of the then Pakistan and after Bangladesh’s 1971 independence from Pakistan it obviously became part of ours,” the official quoted Alam as telling the envoy.
The secretary, he said, also reminded the envoy that Bangladesh’s 2012 victory in an international tribunal over the maritime boundary dispute with Myanmar “reconfirmed that the St Martin’s is integral part of ours”.
Myanmar recently uploaded its map to two global websites visibly showing St. Martin’s Island within its territorial waters.