News
No. 106/2012, Friday, October
05, 2012
THE
International Council of the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts
(ICIP–CHT) has demanded an impartial inquiry into the 22 – 23 attacks on Jumma
people in Rangamati.
The
demand was made in a letter addressed to the prime minister of Bangladesh
Sheikh Hasina on 2 October.
In
the letter the ICIP-CHT president Dr Aditya Dewan expressed ‘deepest concern
over the on-going communal attack on the indigenous peoples by the Bengali
settlers in Rangamati and other areas of the CHT’ and urged her to use her
‘good offices to bear upon the Government of Bangladesh to protect the IPs from
such attacks.’
Mr
Dewan said, ‘In a string of attacks on the IPs in Rangamati that began on 22
September, at least forty indigenous students, one Pahari government physician,
twelve Union Parishad chairpersons and two indigenous teachers of Rangamati
College have sustained injuries.
Bengali settlers indiscriminately attacked, vandalized and set fire on
indigenous shops, houses and clinics. The office and the rest house of the CHT
Regional Council did not escape from the onslaught of the attackers. Attacks
were even carried out on the Paharis as far distant places as Longudu and the
city of Chittagong.’
He
further said that the attack in Rangamati on Jumma people was the latest in the
recurring pattern of such violence that began in the late 1970s.
‘We
are worried that this communal attack on the Paharis in the CHT will not be the
last for the reason that the Government of Bangladesh have not addressed the
structural roots of violence in the CHT.’ he said adding: ‘Of the structural
causes, the most pressing is the settlement of Bengalis in the CHT with a clear
political motive to uproot them from their own lands. And those Bengalis
settlers organize such attacks from time to time to realize that objective.’
The
ICIP-CHT chief put forward a five point demand which includes impartiality of
the security forces in dealing with communal attacks on indigenous peoples, an
impartial inquiry into the Rangamati communal attack and exemplary punishment
to those responsible for it, appropriate compensation for the victims of the
violence, full implementation of Accord and withdrawal of Bengali settlers from
the CHT.
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