Report by the Anti-Slavery Society on the Chittagong Hill Tracts to the UNWGIP 3rd Session - 1984
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DOCUMENT: CHT_UN84.TXT
ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY
FOR THE
PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
REPORT FOR 1984 TO THE
UNITED NATIONS WORKING GROUP ON INDIGENOUS
POPULATIONS
BANGLADESH
At last year's session of the Working Group on
Indigenous Populations the Anti-Slavery Society drew the
attention of the experts to the situation of the tribal
minority peoples living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of
Bangladesh. In that submission we stated that numerous human
rights violations were being perpetrated by the armed forces
against the tribal peoples including murder, torture and
sacrilegious attacks on Buddhist monks and temples. A full
report has now been completed and presented to the Human
Rights Centre.
This year the Society wishes to address itself to the
two matters under discussion during this session: the
question of definition and of land. In the working
definition proposed by the Special Rapporteur, Mr Martinez
Cobo, indigenous populations are described as "the existing
descendants of the people who inhabited the present
territory of a country at the time when persons of a
different culture or ethnic origin arrived." In various
submissions by indigenous peoples organizations, in
Convention 107 of the International Labour Organisation, and
implicitly in various United Nations instruments, it has
been stated that these people have a right to their own
land.
The distinguished representative of Bangladesh stated
last year that Bangladesh had no indigenous peoples. He also
stated that the Bengali-speaking majority had been settled
in the area from prehistoric times. He maintained that the
Working Group should be addressing itself to those
situations such as Australia where, and I quote, "a
colonising and racially distinct people coming from overseas
established settlement and entered into conflict with the
autochton population."
The Chittagong Hill Tracts have been inhabited since
time immemorial by hill tribes different in race, religion
and culture from the Muslim Bengali majority of Bangladesh.
They retained their autonomy during Mughal and British
occupation of the region. Until the 1950s more than 90 per
cent of the population was tribal. Bengalis from the plains
have only begun to settle in the hill tracts in the last two
decades.
When Bengalis came in small numbers they were always
welcomed by the tribespeople but in recent years they have
come in thousands; they arrive poor and unfamiliar with
their new environment and completely unaware of the culture
and traditions of the inhabitants of the region. They have
no knowledge of the communal land base of the tribal
communities, they have no skills in living in the forests
and hills as shifting cultivators and they regard with
suspicion and derision the clothing, way of life and customs
of the tribespeople.
In the last decade the clashes between these two
distinct cultures have led to at least two serious massacres
of tribespeople: in 1980 at Kaokhali and in 1981 at
Matiranga. The inhabitants of the hill tracts fear for their
lives. Tribal villagers hide themselves when soldiers of the
Bangladeshi army are reported in the vicinity such is the
terror now prevalent in the tracts.
The Anti-Slavery Society is quite willing to take the
situation in Australia as the paradigm for the work of these
sessions, as the distinguished representative of Bangladesh
urges. We know as well as any what happened to the
Aboriginal population of Australia in the first century of
occupation. A population of 300,000 was reduced by 4/5ths
and the Aborigines were excluded from all but the most
inhospitable areas of the country. The European settlers
there did not acknowledge land held communally, just as in
the hill tracts today land that is untitled is claimed as
government land and disposed of accordingly. In the last two
decades the indigenous peoples of the region have faced
persistent land alienation.
More than 100,000 tribespeople were displaced in the
1960s as the result of a hydro-electric power project on the
Karnaphuli River. The reservoir inundated 250 square miles
and 40 per cent of the cultivable land of the Chittagong
Hill Tracts. At no time was there consultation with the
hillpeople. Indeed, a study undertaken in 1979 discovered
that 93 per cent of those affected believe that their
economic condition has deteriorated as a consequence of that
development.
Since the independence of Bangladesh in 1972 there has
been a rapid growth of new settlements by non-tribal
Bengalis from the plains, By 1981 it is estimated that
nearly 200,000 had been settled. In July 1982 a new
settlement programme was authorised by the Bangladeshi
government by which a further quarter of a million Bengalis
would be transferred to the district. This massive programme
of settlement will make the indigenous peoples of the
Chittagong Hill Tracts a minority in their own land.
The people of the hill tracts are not seeking
independence, nor the creation of a separate state apart
from Bangladesh, but the recognition that they have the
right to their traditional way of life, their own land and
some measure of control over their own development. The
present situation of terror and violence cannot be allowed
to continue. A new policy from the Bangladeshi government
aimed at providing some tribal autonomy and guaranteeing
rights is a necessity. The Anti-Slavery Society recommends
most earnestly that the Government of Bangladesh:
1) enter into discussion with all sectors of tribal
society in the Chittagong Hill Tracts with a view to
reaching a political settlement which would respect
the land rights, future and identity of indigenous
peoples;
2) bring an immediate halt to the influx of settlers into
the tracts;
3) Investigate human rights violations against tribal
peoples in the hill tracts.
Finally, the Anti-Slavery Society urges the Government
of Bangladesh to allow free access to the troubled region to
international observers and journalists. This measure alone
would do much to reduce the level of fear and suspicion felt
by the tribespeople of the hill tracts.
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