Bangalee settlers' terror on Adivasis in Chittagong hill tracts should be contained for the sake of democracy, observed members of the International CHT Commission yesterday.
Commission Chairperson Sultana Kamal said they were not even considering going for negotiations with any of the settlers organisations as the settlers do not own the hilly area.
Her comments came in reaction to a journalist's question on whether the commission wanted to have the Bangalee settlers' organisation Shamo Odhikar Andolon banned. Shamo Odhikar Andolon is a BNP-Jamaat-backed platform.
Six Bangalee settlers' organisations, including the Shamo Odhikar Andolon, had enforced 36 hours of communication blockade in Rangamati from July 4 to prevent the commission from visiting the CHT. On July 5, a microbus carrying members of the commission was attacked in the presence of police.
The police and the commission filed two cases in connection with the attack that left four people injured.
Police had claimed that the commission had negotiated with the demonstrators for safe passage out of Rangamati.
But Sultana Kamal, at the commission's press conference at the Jatiya Press Club yesterday, said there was no negotiation. “It's [negotiation] completely out of the question … .”
The commission and a number of socio-cultural organisations blamed the law enforcers for negligence and people getting hurt.
The commission yesterday urged all to unite and force the government to prevent its institutions, private companies, security forces and land grabbers from encroaching on land belonging to the Adivasis.
The commission's visit began on July 2 at Khagrachhari, but it was cut short following the demonstration of the Bangalee settlers.
“They [Bangalee settlers] have been able to carry out this [the attack] as the police administration at the CHT never obstructed their unjust behaviour,” the delegation reported.
The report was read out by injured delegation member Dr Iftekharuzzaman at the press conference, which rights activists Khushi Kabir, Swapan Adnan and lawyer Sara Hossain also attended.
Given that hilly land was largely owned by government agencies, security forces, private companies and land grabbers, a vested quarter is now alarmed by the righteous demand of the Adivasis, observed the report epilogue.
It said the vested group was inciting the settlers against the commission.
This is the reason the vested quarter is against the implementation of a number of important provisions of the 1997 CHT Peace Accord that called for settling land disputes through a land commission, the report read.
If the state needs some hilly land, people's opinions must be taken into account. The commission recommended state managed compensation and rehabilitation of the displaced Adivasis.
The commission's visit, the seventh since the 1980s, was made amid allegations that Bangalee settlers and security forces were driving indigenous people away from their homesteads.
The commission also demanded the withdrawal of all false cases filed against the “helpless” indigenous people who had protested their eviction from their land.