On 05 July 2014 Bangladesh army backed Muslim settlers attacked CHT Commission motorcade in Rangamati. Muslim settlers have been protesting the visit of the commission members in Rangamati. 3 people including a member of CHT Commission and Officer-in-Charge (OC) of local police station were injured in this attack.

Home minister threaten indigenous people in CHT

On 16 and 17 October 2019, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, Home Minister of Bangladesh visited Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) for 2 days with pomp. During his visit, he delivered speech at least at 2 gatherings at Ramgarh and Rangamati along with a retinue of high-level officers of Bangladeshi security forces, local public representatives and civil society members.

The Home Minister spoke against killings, conflicts, terrorism, abduction and extortion. He pronounced direct threatening of drastic measures against the terrorists. With an assertion, he also said that peace will be restored in CHT at any cost. He has covertly warned by saying that formidable days are coming to those who are engaged in extortion and bloodshed in the hills.

Echoing the same tune, the GOC of 24 Infantry Division, Director General of RAB, Inspector General of Police and Home Secretary also, while raising allegations of terror, conflict and extortion, delivered one-sided speech blended with provocation and threatening of dire consequences. The threatening uttered in their deliberations of speech, among other frightening words, include: ‘…the terrorists will be dug out from their hideouts even be it lying under 3 feet deep in the earth. The cases with Dhaka wherein dwell more than 20 million people and in addition, despite regular in and out going of one crore commoners, the terrorists are easily busted, as such, for the case with CHT populated of some 1.6 million, searching out the terrorists cannot be a matter of impossibility….’.

As a result of such one-sided allegations and threatening, there has arisen panic and anxiety in the psyche of mass people in CHT at large. Amid continued arbitrary arrest, killing in so-called crossfire, searching houses in the wee hours and rampaging household articles and regardless physical torture, the threat of ‘formidable days ahead’ has made the people extremely panic-ridden and insecure.

It is as bright as the day that the government has been persuading one after another conspiracy to achieve its mean objectives to turn the CHT Accord into a null & void issue, to ruin the leadership of PCJSS, one of the signatories of CHT Accord, and, above all, to realize ethnic cleansing of the Jumma people. It is to be noted that immediately after signing of the Accord, the government, security forces, state machineries and the ruling parties have been providing support to the anti-Accord UPDF element; facilitating the self-styled Reformist collaborator clique with sponsorship, shelters and indulgence; and patronization of the foreign armed group named Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) through which series of conspiracy involving anti-Accord activities and designs of anti-interest of the Jumma people etc. have been persuading in CHT. It is due to the conspiring genre of this category on government part, the undesirable incidents like killings, blood shedding, terrorism, extortion and kidnapping continue to exist as daily usual matters. Hence, it is needless to say that the Home Minister has resorted to Goebbels’ policy by raising allegations of killing, terrorism and extortion obviously to direct the course of deteriorating situation CHT towards different direction.

Sources: