Silent Genocide in the Chittagong Hill Tacts

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Silent Genocide in the Chittagong Hill Tacts

 

Despite commitments made in the 1997 CHT Accord for demilitarization

of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and lifting the military rule from the

region, officials of the Bangladesh military intelligence agency,ate General of Field Intelligence (DGFI), in yet another arrogant

and unlawful interference in the affairs of the CHT Regional Council

raided the official quarter of the CHT Regional Council chairman

Jyotirindra Bodhipriyo Larma on 13 July evening.

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Larma, who is also president of the Parbatya Chattagram Jana

Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), the political organization representing the

Jumma indigenous people, enjoys the status of a deputy minister in

Bangladesh.

 

 

 

 

 

During this operation the police cordoned the entire Kalyanpur area in

Rangamati town housing the official residence of the Jumma indigenous

leader.

 

 

 

 

 

The DGFI officials aided by police Sub-Inspector Asifur Rahman, Sub-

Inspector Asif Elahi and Sub-Inspector Mohan Lal entered the

compound of the quarter of the chairman ignoring the security warning of

the police guards on duty and threatened the leaders of CHT permanent

Bengali residents who came to meet him.

 

 

 

 

 

The area was de-cordoned after one and half hour. The PCJSS

protested the raid and demanded punitive action against the officials

involved.

 

 

 

 

 

In another case, on 14 June, the military of the Rangamati Brigade led

by Captain Ferdous harassed and tortured 18 leaders of the CHT

Permanent Bengali Residents Welfare Council for their support to the

CHT Accord and distance from the Sama Adhikar Andolan, an

organization floated by Bengali settler leader and M.P. Mohammad

Abdul Wadud Bhuiyan and military authorities with an objective of

settlement of Bengali settlers in the CHT which opposes and

undermines the

 

Accord and its implementation. Among the victims of torture, Md. Azam

Ali Azam was seriously injured. He was arrested on a false charge on

17 June at 1.00 a.m. while he was under treatment in Rangamati

Hospital.

 

 

 

 

 

Bangladesh military authorities have been putting tremendous pressure

on the leaders of the CHT Permanent Bengali Residents Welfare

Council to dissolve and close their organization and follow the track of

the Sama Adhikar Andolan. They also allegedly instructed them not to

maintain any relations with the chairman of the CHT Regional Council

with threat to face dire consequences if they fail to respect the

instruction.

 

 

 

The 13 July raid is a calculated political move of the BNP-led four-party

coalition to intimidate Mr. Larma to resign from the CHT Regional

Council so that body could be reconstituted with ruling party-workers

and Islamic radicals in line with the three Hill District Councils of the

CHT.

 

 

 

 

 

The CHT Regional Council predominantly formed with PCJSS leaders,

who signed the CHT Accord with the former Awami League government,

has been a stumbling block to the government policy of settlement of

Bengali settlers in lands and territories traditionally owned and

controlled by Jumma indigenous people. This policy thought out by the

first prime minister of independent Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

in the early 1970s and persistently executed by his two successive

military regimes headed by Major General Ziaur Rahman (1975 - 1981)

and Lt. General H. M Ershad (1982- 1990) encourages cleansing of the

indigenous people through demographic invasion, forcible confiscation of

indigenous lands and dislocation of indigenous people, militarization and

atrocities, religious persecution and imposition of Islam and Bengali

cultural values on the indigenous people.

 

 

 

Under this policy, the CHT was converted into a virtual cantonment of

Bangladesh military with 80,000 troops, 25,000 BDR (Bangladesh Rifles

= a paramilitary force) personnel, 8,000 Answars (Islamic Guards) and

1,500 navy servicemen (source: The Report of the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Commission: "LIFE IS NOT OURS" Land and Human Rights in the

Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, P. 14, 1991, Amsterdam ) and

settlements of over 400,000 Bengali settlers surrounded by hundreds of

mosques and madrasas (Islamic schools) in the late 1970s and early

1980s.

 

 

 

 

 

As a result, more than 15,000 Jummas including Buddhist monks were

killed, hundreds of Jumma women were mass raped, hundreds of

sacred religious sites (Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples and

Christian churches) of the Jumma people were set ablaze, nearly

120,000 Jummas were forced to leave their homeland and take shelter

as refugee in India in the 1980s and early 1990s and 98,208 Jumma

families (source:TaskForce Report 2000) were displaced within the CHT.

 

 

 

The state-sponsored demographic invasion led to the sharp increase in

the Bengali population in the CHT from nearly 2% in 1947 to 49% in

1991 (source: Census Report 1991. Some indigenous sources,

however, say that this figure is highly manipulated. The Bengalis

constitute more than 60% of the current CHT population, they claim). It

has completely changed the demography and social fabric of the CHT.

 

 

 

After the 1997 CHT Accord, the in-migration of Bengalis from plain areas

into the Hill districts with support from the government and state-

machineries has accelerated to an alarming proportion, and now it is a

continuous process threatening the identity and survival of the Jumma

indigenous people.

 

 

 

The government of Bangladesh is carrying out a systematic ethnic

cleansing campaign – a silent genocide -- against the defenseless

indigenous people of the CHT without any challenge from the

international community and media!!!

 

Peace Campaign Group (PCG)