On 17 April 2011 Bangladesh army backed Muslim settlers attacked 5 indigenous Buddhist villages in Ramgarh and 2 indigenous villages in Manikchari in Chittagong Hill Tracts. In this attack around 200 indigenous houses including 2 Buddhist temples were torched. At least 20 indigenous people were injured and at least half dozen indigenous people were missing. Muslim settlers attacked this indigenous Buddhist girl with machete.

Bangladesh army terrorize indigenous people in Rangamati

On 24 April 2020, at around 7:30 pm, a group of Bangladesh army numbering around 55-60 personnel from the Rangamati Army Zone dividing into five small groups conducted a search and destroy operation in the Rajdwip area of ??Rangamati. The military operation caused widespread harassment, anxiety and resentment among the people of the area.

At that time, the army searched the house of Foreign Chakma (35) and several other houses in the vicinity and detained indigenous pedestrians and interrogated them. Bangladesh army forced 3 indigenous youths named Protul Chakma (25), Rubel Chakma (24) and Pratimay Chakma (34) to walk around the area with them in the rain.

After about 2 hours of search and harassment, Bangladesh army personnel left the scene. Local alleged that although the military have been active in maintaining social distance, enforcing lockdowns and raising awareness across the country to prevent corona, however, they have mainly been conducting search and destroy operations in indigenous villages by taking the advantage of the corona disaster in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Therefore, indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts are living in fear of being infected with the coronavirus on the one hand during the ongoing global corona epidemic and for fear of being tortured by the army on the other hand.

This is the brutality of the military rule in the Chittagong Hill Tracts called ‘Operation Uttaran’ of 2001 introduced by the Awami League government which signed the CHT Accord, violating the provisions.

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