Conflicts in Chittagong Hill Tracts area have continued for many years. The British divided the Sino-Tibetan area from Mizoram, Tripura, and Burma which were unrelated to Bengalis to create the Chittagong Hill Tracts and thus created a buffer zone for Bengal. After the liberation war of Bangladesh, CHT became part of Bangladesh. The conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts dates back to when Bangladesh was the eastern wing of Pakistan. Widespread resentment occurred over the displacement of as many as 100,000 of the native peoples due to the construction of the Kaptai Dam in 1962. The displaced did not receive compensation from the government and many thousands fled to India. After the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, representatives of the Chittagong Hill Tracts who were against the freedom of Bangladesh such as the Buddhist Chakma politician Manabendra Narayan Larma sought autonomy and recognition of the rights of the people’s of the region. Larma and other Hill Tracts representatives protested the draft of the Constitution of Bangladesh. According to them it did not recognise the ethnic identity and culture of the non-Muslim, non-Bengali people of Bangladesh. Their allegations were that the government policy recognised only the Bengali culture and the Bengali language, and designated all citizens of Bangladesh as Bengalis.
Since our independence CHT was under Army occupation and UN reports suggest many crimes were committed by our Armed Forces against Hill Tracts people including rape. Between 1981 and 1994 it is estimated that 2,500 Jumma women had been raped by Bangladesh armed forces and in 1995 it was estimated that of over 94% of rapes between 1991 and 1993 had been carried out by the Bangladesh armed forces. In the 1980s, the government of our country at the time began settling Bengalis in the region, causing the eviction of many natives and a significant alteration of demographics. Having constituted only 11.6% of the regional population in 1974, the number of Bengalis grew by 1991 to constitute 48.5% of the regional population.
An armed rebel group known as ‘Shanti Bahini’ was formed by Parbattya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS) to tackle Bengali armed forces and they laid their first attack on Bangladeshi Army convoy in 1977. They carried out kidnapping of civilians and extortion. Members of Shanti Bahini extorted the local population in the name of toll collection; the total amount of toll collected is estimated to be 4 million dollars. They continued targeting Bengali people and killing them until the Peace Agreement was signed between the government of Bangladesh led by Bangladesh Awami League and the PCJSS on 2 December 1997.
Sheikh Hasina recalled the surrender of Shanti Bahini after the peace treaty and disclosed the plans of the present Government to develop the CHT region by implementing various education, health, agriculture and communication sectors.
But the problem is even twenty years after the Peace Treaty accords, indigenous people are still attacked over land. In 1997 the government promised to undertake development for their economic empowerment, while allowing them to keep their cultural practices, including communal ownership of land but the commitments were not kept and disputes over land remain unsolved. Hill Tracts people want economic development not just recognition of ownership of land. Besides, the government lacks competence to carry out an honest implementation of any policy.
