ZAFAR SOBHAN
What’s going on in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is the story we Bangladeshis, or at least the majority ethnic Bengalis, don’t like to talk about too much. Our long record of suppression of indigenous rights and marginalisation of non-Bengali peoples is too shameful and does not mesh well with our national self-image as the eternal victim and the perpetually downtrodden.
But in the CHT, it is the Bengali Muslim who has turned oppressor, who has the state and the armed forces on his side, and who has been the guilty party, showing that we have quite as much an inclination for domination and repression when the numbers and power equation are in our favour.
The CHT peace accord signed by the Awami League government in 1997 to bring to an end two decades of low-level insurgency and provide a framework for the self-determination and protection of the rights of the non-Bengali indigenous population of the CHT was supposed to change all that. Unfortunately, successive governments have not done nearly enough to implement the accord, and, today, almost 15 years since it was signed, the situation in the CHT seems to be going backwards.
It had been hoped that the return of the AL to power in 2009 would help the cause of indigenous rights in the CHT, as neither the intervening BNP government of 2001-06 nor the army-backed caretaker government of 2007-08 had much sympathy for the CHT’s adivasi population or their aspirations and concerns.
But if the official government response to the recent report bought out by a UN Special Rapporteur on the status of the implementation of the 1997 peace accord and presented to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is anything to go by, not only will the current sorry state of affairs continue unabated, but the government will not even acknowledge that there is a problem, much less do anything to work towards a resolution.
The Bangladeshi response to the report was worse than depressing. The first line of defence was that: “Bangladesh does not have an ‘indigenous’ population … the Accord has nothing to do with ‘indigenous issues’ and therefore the government of Bangladesh reiterates its position that the Forum, which is mandated to deal with ‘indigenous issues’ does not have any locus standi in discussing the issues related to the CHT Peace Accord.”
TSG for more
(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)