chtnews.com
News No. 105/2011, April 26, 2011
THE Jumma People’s Network – Korea, an organization of the expatriate and exiled Jummas in South Korea, held a press conference in front of Bangladesh embassy in Seoul in protest against the 17 April communal attack on Jumma people in Ramgarh.
The press conference was held at 10am today. Apart from JPNK members, representatives from Socialist Party of Korea, Buddhist Solidarity For Reform, PNAN, a Christian NGO mainly concerned with refugees, and media persons also attended it.
Members of the JPNK and their supporting Korean organizations showed placards and shouted slogans against continuing human rights violations in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
Ex-president of the Socialist Party of Korea, Mr. Cho Kwang Eun, in his address termed the Ramgarh attack as abhorrent.
When an embassy staff asked the organizers to turn the volume of the speaker low, Mr. Hotaeg Lee, chief of the Refugee PNAN, said “rights of the Jumma people is more important than the noises of the speaker”.He strongly urged the government of Bangladesh to stop human rights violation in the CHT.
Mr. Sugata Nanda Chakma, Vice President of JPNK, made the opening remarks, while Shanti Jiban Chakma, ex president of JPNK, and Prajna Dwip Chkma, Finance Secretary of JPNK, also addressed the press conference.
JPNK General Secretary Chotto Chakma and its ex General Secretary Ronel Chakma moderated the conference.
At the end of the press conference, which was in all practical purposes a protest demonstration, the JPNK representatives handed a memorandum to the embassy.
In the memo, they urged the government to investigate the Ramgarh incident and bring the culprits to justice, stop attacks on the Jumma people, withdraw the Bangladesh army and the settlers from the CHT, and to grant full autonomy for the CHT.
This report is based on a press release issued by Choto Chakma, General Secretary, Jumma Peoples Network-Korea (JPNK).