COMMENTARY

Structural Roots of Violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Bhumitra Chakma

The continued violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh is rooted in the states policy of erasing the ethnic identity of the indigenous people and usurping their land for settling Bengali-speaking populations. In this, Bangladesh has followed the same policy as Pakistan and used the army and state machinery to suppress and evict the local people from their land and livelihoods. Unless the structural roots of this violence are addressed by the Bangladesh state, the cycle of violence will not end.

n 19 and 20 February 2010, Bengali settlers backed by the Bangladesh armed forces attacked 14 indigenous villages in the Baghaichat region of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. Land grab was the motive of the attacks (for details, see ACHR 2010). Six indigenous people, including a woman, were killed in ring by the armed forces, at least 25 persons were injured (including a member of Bangladesh army personnel in civilian dress), and about 300 houses (including a UNDP-funded village centre) were burnt to ashes. A church was vandalised and a Buddhist temple was gutted. Violence expanded to other areas like Khagrachari district town, Kaukhali, etc, in the following days and caused widespread destruction including the death of a Bengali settler. This incident is not an isolated event. Rather, it is the latest development in the long-running saga of violence against the indigenous communities of the CHT by Bengali settlers, directly and indirectly aided by the Bangladesh armed forces and implicitly acquiesced in, by the Bengalidominated civil administration. At the core of the problem is the Bangladesh governments politically-motivated Bengali settlement policy in order to change the demographic character of the CHT, which inevitably leads to clashes over land. In practice, this policy has transformed into
Table 1: Massacres in the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Place

one of ethnic cleansing, as the new immigrants began grabbing the lands of the indigenous people through eviction with support from or complicity of various state agencies, particularly the army. From this standpoint, the Bangladesh state, instead of being the protector of the indigenous people, has become a key source of their insecurity and an active agent of ethnocide. In what follows I explain the structural roots of state violence against indigenous communities in the CHT.

Independent Bangladesh and Indigenous People

Following the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the indigenous communities of the CHT demanded constitutional recognition of their identities. They placed the following demands to the rst prime minister of the country, Sheikh Mujibar Rahman:
(1) autonomy of the Chittagong Hill Tracts with its own legislature; (2) retention of Regulation 1900 in the constitution of Bangladesh (This refers to the regulations under the Act of 1900 passed by the British to preserve the traditional sociocultural and political institutions of the indigenous people of the CHT, based on customary laws, common ownership of land and so on. Regulation 1900 was often diluted between the period 1947-71 by the Government of Pakistan); (3) continuation of the ofces of circle chief; (4) a constitutional provision restricting the amendment of Regulation 1900 and imposing a ban on the inux of the non-Hill people.

The prime minister not only rejected the demands of the indigenous people, but also advised them to forget their ethnic identities and merge with Bengali nationalism (al-Ahsan and Chakma 1989: 967). The Constitution that was adopted in December 1972 declared Bangladesh a mono-national and a mono-cultural entity,
Date Number of Dead

Mubachari Kaukhali-Kalampati massacre Barkal massacre Panchari massacre Matiranga massacre Commillatilla/Taindong massacre Hirachar, Sarbotoli, Khagrachari, Pablakhali massacres Longudu massacre Malya massacre

15 October 1979 25 March 1980 31 May 1984 1 May 1986 May 1986 18-19 May 1986 8-10 August 1988 4 May 1989 2 February 1992 10 April 1992 17 November 1993

Number unknown 200-300 110 Number unknown 70 200 over 100 over 30 30 138 100

Bhumitra Chakma (B.Chakma@hull.ac.uk) is currently visiting fellow at Woodrow Wilson International Centre, Washington DC, and teaches politics at the University of Hull, UK.

Logang massacre Naniarchar massacre

Sources: Compiled from various sources, including The CHT Commission (1997, 2000), Life is Not Ours: Land and Human Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, The report of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission; Amnesty International (1986), Bangladesh: Unlawful Killings and Torture in the Chittagong Hill Tracts; Mohsin (1999), The Politics of Nationalism.

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Table 2: CHT Population: Hill and Non-Hill People (1872-Present)
Year Hill People Number % Non-Hill People Number %

1872 1901 1951 1956 1981 1991 2001*

61,957 1,16,063 2,61,538 300,000 4,55,000 5,01,144

98.26 92.98 90.91 90.91 61.07 51.43

1,097 8,762 26,150 300,00 2,90,000 4,73,301

1.74 7.02 9.09 9.09 38.93 48.57

* Curiously the 2001 Census does not provide a figure categorising hill people and Bengalis in the CHT. Source: Adnan (2004: 15).

identities of the indigenous communities. When the demand went unheeded, the PCJSS organised a guerrilla force, Shanti Bahini (Peace Force), in the mid-1970s to pursue regional autonomy. Armed clashes soon ensued between this Shanti Bahini and the Bangladesh armed forces that continued till the signing of a peace accord in December 1997. In the interim years violence took structural root in the CHT.

Militarisation and Massacres

Area %

Table 3: CHT Soil Type and Land Use

Type of Soil and Land Use Class of Lands Area in Acres

All purpose agriculture Terrace agriculture Mostly horticulture and partly forestry Only forestry Horticulture and forestry

A B C D CD

76,466 67,871

3.07 2.72

3,66,622 14.71 18,16,993 72.91 32,024 653 1,31,637 24,92,266 1.28 0.03 5.28 100

Settlement Water bodies Total

Source: Adnan (2004: 112).

allowing no space for the identity of the indigenous communities. Article 9 read:
The unity and solidarity of the Bengali nation, which deriving its identity from its language and culture, attained sovereign and independent Bangladesh through a united and determined struggle in the war of independence shall be the basis of Bengali nationalism (Bangladesh Constitution 1972: 5).

Additionally, Article 3 (Part I) declared Bangla as the state language, and Article 6 (Part I) announced the citizens of Bangladesh were to be known as Bengalis. The policies of the government of Bangladesh (GoB) towards the CHT directly owed from the spirit and text of the constitution and its primary objective was to assimilate the indigenous communities into the Bengali nation.

As soon as armed clashes between the guerrillas and the Bangladesh army began, GoB militarised the region by deploying 1,15,000 military personnel one soldier for ve to six hill persons (Levene 1999: 354). In the 1980s, the CHT was, effe ctively, turned into a large military garrison. As a result of this militarisation of the region, attacks on indigenous villages and detention, torture, disappearance and killing of the hill people became almost routine occurrences. From the late 1970s onward, the armed forces also started massacre as a policy instrument. On 15 October 1979, government forces massacred unarmed villagers in Mubachari, the rst large-scale killing in the CHT (Samad 1980), and Amnesty International reported more such massacres in the subsequent years committed jointly by the military and the Bengali settlers (Amnesty I nternational 1986). The

Kaukhali massacre on 25 March 1980 (ironically it was on this, day nine years previously, that Pakistani forces had attacked unarmed Bengalis in East Pakistan that eventually culminated into the emergence of an independent Bangladesh) surpassed, according to a Chittagong University academic, all previous records of brutalities committed against indigenous people.1 The consistent pattern of these massacres in the 1970s and 1980s were indeed the crossing of the Rubicon from a genocidal process to active genocide (Levene 1999: 359). Table 1 (p 19) highlights the pattern.

Policy of Demographic Change

From the late 1970s, the Bangladeshi government has consistently pursued a policy of change the demography in the CHT. The only objective of this policy appears to be to outnumber the indigenous people in their own land. Eviction from their homes and lands, and massacres were the most prominent measures of this broad approach pursued by the armed forces in collusion with the Bengali settlers. From this period, the government began to settle Bengalis in the CHT and planned to provide ve acres of hilly land, four acres of mixed land and 2.5 acres of paddy land to each settler family (Anti-Slavery Society 1984: 71-73). How vigorously the government pursued the policy can be observed in

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Rise of Resistance
The assimilationist policy of GoB soon led to the rise of resistance in the CHT. A r egional political party Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS) (United Peoples Organisation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts), was formed in the early 1970s in reaction to GoBs assimilationist policy. In the 1973 general elections, the PCJSS candidate, M N Larma, was elected to represent the CHT people in the national parliament. In parliament, he repeatedly demanded constitutional recognition of the separate

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the rapid change of the CHTs demographic structure. Table 2 (p 20) highlights this. The Bengali settlement programme not only quickly altered the demographic character of the CHT, it also expedited the process of ethnic cleansing. Indeed, ethnic cleansing was ingrained in the GoBs p olicy, because without evicting the indigenous people from their lands it was simply not possible to settle Bengalis in the CHT. Between 1980 and early 1984, a ccording to The Guardian, 4,00,000 Bengalis were settled in the CHT.2 Assuming four persons in a family, it means that about 1,00,000 families were brought during this period. If each family was to be given ve acres of hilly land, four acres of mixed land and 2.5 acres of paddy land as planned, then following amounts of land were necessary: Hilly land: Mixed land: Paddy land: 1,00,000X5 = acres 1,00,000X4 = acres 1,00,000X2.5 = acres 5,00,000 acres 4,00,000 acres 2,50,000 acres

peace accord was signed between the GoB and the PCJSS in December 1997. In the last 13 years this accord has not delivered the intended peace in the CHT. Rather violence has reappeared continuously in the region. One of the key reasons for this is that the accord failed to address the structural cause of the problem in the CHT settlement of Bengalis and their usurpation of indigenous land. Without addressing this, it is a simple equation that the peace accord will not only falter, the CHT will experience more violence and bloodshed in the years to come. And the process of ethnocide will continue.
Notes
1 The massacre occurred in a Buddhist temple in Kaukhali village. On 25 March 1980, the local commander of Bangladesh armed forces called the villagers to reconstruct the aging temple. When the people gathered there, the members of Bangladesh armed forces started to shoot indiscriminately and killed and injured many hill people. A media blackout imposed by the Bangladesh government kept the outside world in dark about the massacre. Amnesty International managed to document the incident. A graphic description of the massacre can be found in an article of Chittagong University academic, Hayat Hossein (see Hossein 1986). Bangladesh authorities did not investigate the Kaukhali massacre, but a fact-nding team of three opposition parliament members (Upendra Lal Chakma and Shahjahan Siraj of Jatiyo Samajtantric Dal and Rashed Khan Menon of Workers Party) independently carried out an investigation and demanded (fruitlessly) a full judicial inquiry of the massacre. The author has obtained a copy of the report of the independent enquiry by the three opposition p arliamentarians. 2 The Guardian (London), 6 March 1984.

References
ACHR (Asian Centre for Human Rights) (2010): Bangladesh: IPS Massacred for Land Grab, 23 February; accessed at: http://www.achrweb. org/reports/ bangla/ CHT012010.pdf. Adnan, S (2004): Migration, Land Alienation and Conict: Causes of Poverty in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, Research and Advisory Service, Dhaka. al-Ahsan, S A and B Chakma (1989): Problems of N ational Integration in Bangladesh: The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Asian Survey, Vol 29, No 10, pp 959-70. Amnesty International (1986): Bangladesh: Unlawful Killing and Torture in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Amnesty International, London. Anti-Slavery Society (1994): The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Militarisation, Oppression, and the Hill Tribe (London: Anti-Slavery Society Publication). CHT (Chittagong Hill Tracts) Commission (1997, 2000): Life Is Not Ours: Land and Human Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tract, Bangladesh, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. Hossein, H (1986): Problem of National Integration in Bangladesh in Bangladesh: History and Culture, Vol 1, S R Chakravarty and V Narain (ed.) (New Delhi: South Asia Publishers). Levene, M (1999): The Chittagong Hill Tracts: A Case Study in the Political Economy of Creeping G enocide, Third World Quarterly, Vol 20, No 2, pp 339-69. Ministry of Law (1972): The Constitution of The P eoples Republic of Bangladesh, Government of Bangladesh, Dhaka. Mohsin, A (1999): The Politics of Nationalism: The Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh (Dhaka: University Press Limited). (2003): The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh: On the Difcult Road to Peace, Lynne Rienner, London. Roy, R D (1997): The Population Transfer Programme of 1980s and the Land Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Living on the Edge: Essays on the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Subir Bhaumik, Meghna Guhathakurtha and Sabbyachasi Basu Ray Chaudhury (ed.), Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, pp 167-208. Samad, S (1980): What Is Happening in the Chittagong Hill Tracts? (in Bengali), Robbar, 22 June.

But the trouble was that the amount of land that was necessary to settle the new immigrants was simply unavailable in the CHT as Table 3 (p 20) on the CHT s land availability suggests. Bengali settlement continued after 1984 and indeed continues till date. The government brought Bengalis for settlement in the CHT in large numbers but certainly could not provide the amount of land it promised to each settler family because of unavailability of cultivable land. Hence, what the settlers simply did was that they began to grab the lands of the indigenous people (for details on this, see Roy 1997: 167-208; Adnan 2004). And in this effort they got active support from the Bangladesh armed forces. Eviction, terrorisation and massacres in the CHT were a part of this process. In the 1980s, terrorisation led about 50,000 indigenous people to become refugees in India and Bengali settlers grabbed the lands left by them. Put simply, without grabbing the lands of the indigenous people it was not possible to settle any outsider in the CHT. The intermittent eruption of violence in the CHT is the direct result of GoBs policy of Bengali settlement. It is now structurally ingrained. Unless this structural root of violence is addressed it is unlikely that durable peace will return to the CHT. A

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