Commentary Report
Today, a candle-lighting vigil will be held in memory
of Akhraw Marma, Athuipru Marma and Theiching Marma who were martyred in a
military–settler attack in Guimara, Khagrachari. At the call of a newly formed
organization of martyr families called the Shaheed Smriti Sangrakshan Sangshad,
this program is being observed across the Chittagong Hill Tracts and in Dhaka,
Chattogram and Rajshahi.
On 28 September, while peacefully enforcing a road
blockade called in protest against the rape of a Marma teenage girl, members of
the army opened indiscriminate fire and the three young men lost their lives.
It is known, however, that Akhraw Marma did not die instantly at the scene.
After he was shot in the leg, army personnel took him away and, instead of
sending him to a hospital for treatment, subjected him to unspeakable physical
torture. As a result, while in army custody he died from excessive blood loss
and the torture.
A month has passed since the army–settler attack on
the Marma-dominated Ramesu Bazaar in Guimara. Yet no one who carried out the
attack, looting and killings has been arrested. The police merely filed a case
naming unknown persons, and did nothing more than that. Even though the
perpetrators are identified, they have not been arrested.
Meanwhile, the soldiers and settlers involved in the
attack are desperately trying to cover up their crimes and shift the blame onto
others. They have started a vicious campaign of slander against the UPDF. The
breadth of their lies is astonishing. The government, administration, state
apparatus and media are all on the side of the murderous soldiers and settlers.
Therefore it can be said with certainty that, like previous attacks, the
Guimara attack will go unpunished and the perpetrators will not be held accountable.
In fact, all colonial regimes in the world share the
same character. The colonized receive no justice. By contrast, members of the
ruling nation escape accountability even after committing heinous crimes.
Shashi Tharoor — a senior leader of India’s Congress party and former
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations — in his book An Era of Darkness:
The British Empire in India, describes the true face of rule of law under
British colonial rule in India. There is no difference between his description and
the present rule of law in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Because of the direct
military occupation, the rule of law in the Hill Tracts is a hundred times
worse than under British rule.
Tharoor, in one passage of the book, recounts that
when two British officers, Lieutenant Thompson and Neave, shot and killed an
Indian boy in Bangalore, the local villagers forcibly took Neve’s gun away. Two
of the villagers were then punished: they received six months’ imprisonment for
the crime of misappropriating the white man’s weapon. The killers received no
punishment. The case was framed as an “attack by natives against Europeans.”
In the same book Tharoor mentions another striking
incident. In 1902 in Sialkot three soldiers of the 9th Lancers physically
tortured and killed an Indian because he had refused to provide women for them
that night. Authorities carried out no investigation; they tried to cover the
crime by calling the deceased a drunkard and protecting the perpetrators. The
incident angered the then-Viceroy Lord Curzon and many Britons living in India.
Still, Lord Curzon was unable to increase the punishment of the killers of the
"damned nigger."
This British colonial mindset is one hundred per cent
prevalent among the Bengali rulers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. That is why,
under the military occupation and settler colonialism in the Hills, it is
futile to expect justice for the hill peoples. Army members and settlers commit
murder, genocide, rape, forcible seizure of others’ property, looting and other
heinous crimes, yet in the courts they are never punished. They are not even
arrested. On the contrary, the Hill people -- the victims -- are oppressed.
They are portrayed as terrorists and criminals. Even seeking justice is treated
as insolence. Their homes are searched, they are harassed, beaten, arrested
without cause and sent to prison.
Until the military occupation and settler colonialism
in the Hills end, no change in this situation can be expected. Only through
relentless struggle can this change be achieved. It should be remembered that
injustice is never permanent. British rule in India ended through struggle.
Likewise, through struggle one day the military occupation and settler
colonialism in the Chittagong Hill Tracts will also end.
(30 October 2025)
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