Peace and Environment News* March 1996
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Peace and Environment News * March 1996 |
by Timothy Donais
Subodh Bikash Chakma might well be talking about the world's most infamous human rights violations. When he talks about "ethnic cleansing," he could be referring to Bosnia. When he discusses government-sponsored resettlement programs aimed at altering the demographics of a disputed area, he might be talking about Indonesian policy in East Timor. And he could be referring to Guatemala when he talks about local indigenous populations being forced to live in military-controlled "villages" far from their own lands and means of livelihood.
But he's not. As he sipped coffee and chain-smoked at a local Grabbajabba during a recent visit to Ottawa, Chakma was talking about one place, a place many of us have probably never heard of. Some 700,000 indigenous people live in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region of south-eastern Bangladesh, and Chakma says for the past thirty years these people—his people, the ten different ethnic groups known as the Jumma Nation—have been the largely anonymous victims of massive human rights violations.
In a country of 120 million people, the Jummas represent less than half of one percent of the population, but their efforts to control their land and way of life have captured the full attention of the Bangladeshi military. Unrest in the CHT began in the early 1960s, when the World Bank-supported Kaptai Dam displaced 100,000 Jumma people and submerged 40 percent of the area's best agricultural land. Tensions rose further after Bangladeshi independence in 1971, when the new government refused to recognize previous agreements guaranteeing special status for the Jumma peoples. Beginning in 1975, the Jummas started to fight back. The government responded with a policy of population transfer which saw some 400,000 ethnic Bengalis move into the region, a forced resettlement of tribal peoples into so-called "cluster villages," and what Chakma describes as the total domination of the military over all aspects of tribal life. "What people say is: 'Life is not ours—our life is in the hands of the military'," he said. "If my son wants to go to college or university, it will be decided by the military."
That domination, said Chakma, has been maintained by a series of massacres which have claimed the lives of some 2,500 Jumma people, and driven some 70,000 more across the border into India, where 50,000 remain today. Chakma adds that the problems in the CHT have been compounded by the environmental degradation caused by the plundering of the resource-rich hill tracts by the military. Bangladeshi military leaders have been quoted as saying, "We want only the land, and not the people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts."
For its part, the Bangladeshi government puts a somewhat different spin on the situation, blaming "misguided elements" among the tribal people for the ongoing problems. Speaking recently on the CHUO radio program Beyond Borders, Bangladeshi High Commissioner Mufleh R. Osmany said his government has been doing its part to work towards a peaceful, negotiated settlement. "It cannot be to the advantage of anyone to resort to violence," he said, "but some of the tribal people have chosen the path of violence—they are trying to terrorize the majority of the tribal people who are peacefully living in Bangladesh." As part of the government's attempts to deal with these terrorist elements, he said, innocent people have occasionally gotten caught in the crossfire.
"Bullshit" is how Faruq Faisel characterizes this statement from the Bangladesh High Commission. A Bangladeshi journalist living in Canada, Faisel says if the government was truly serious about peace, a political solution in the CHT would have been found long ago. Since the Jumma's political arm declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1992, more than a dozen rounds of peace talks have brought the conflict no closer to resolution. And while Faisel does not believe the government is deliberately pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing in the hill tracts, as Chakma argues, he says the government sees certain political advantages in maintaining the status quo, not the least of which is being able to blame "India-backed terrorists" for problems within Bangladesh.
In the face of this stalemate, Chakma's recent visit to Ottawa was aimed at drumming up Canadian support for an international conference on the CHT taking place in Bangkok in October. Canada, he says, because of its good international reputation and significant aid program in Bangladesh, could potentially play a major role in bringing about a just peace. But he says donor nations such as Canada are reluctant to get involved in the CHT issues, and as he speaks, the frustrations of a people who feel they have been ignored by the international community for too long begin to bubble to the surface. "How can they deal with aid and trade without considering gross violations of human rights and environmental degradation?" he asked in exasperation. "Why are they not concerned with these issues?"
Converted April 4, 2000 - Lg
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