The Guardian,

Wednesday June 25, 2008

Article history

Pushed to the edge of existence

A little-known indigenous group in Bangladesh has for decades been persecuted. Will international pressure ensure its survival?

Members of one of the least-known groups of indigenous people in the world are facing what they see as a struggle for survival in Bangladesh. They claim that their way of life is being increasingly threatened by the Bangladeshi government and military while the world's back is turned.

There are around 600,000 Jumma living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, in south-east Bangladesh, where they can trace their history back to the 12th century. For many years, they lived a remote existence in the jungle area above Chittagong. A treaty with the British in 1900 appeared to offer them protection "to help preserve the tribal culture" and to leave them to their own devices, in exchange for taxation. They continued this existence, largely untroubled, as part of East Pakistan - after the partition that followed India's independence in 1947 - until the 1970s.

In 1971, Bangladesh won independence in the wake of a bloody struggle against West Pakistan and following the brief India-Pakistan war that brought an end to the conflict. Senior figures in the new Bangladeshi government were angry that some Jumma had sided with West Pakistan, although some had also fought on the other side, with the Mukti Bahini, the Bangladeshi freedom fighters. As a result, the Jumma claim, the newly independent government put in place a punitive policy that saw the arrival of the Bangladesh military, the influx of tens of thousands of settlers, and the displacement of many Jumma, some of whom fled to India.

"We were the first inhabitants of the area," says Lal Amlai, a member of one of the 11 Jumma tribes, the Bawm. He is living in London now, hoping to draw the world's attention to what is happening. When he was nine years old, Amlai and his family were forced out of their village and their bamboo homes were destroyed. They were made to live in a military "grouping centre". "The military treated any opposition very brutally," he says. "Many of the activists have never been seen again."

Tribal members, who were traditionally Buddhist, with some Hindus and Christians, were pressured into becoming Muslims, he says. "They forced us to say 'salaam aleikum', and when people forgot to say it, they were beaten."

An armed struggle broke out in 1974 and continued sporadically for the next two decades. During that time, there were, Amlai says, 13 major massacres. In the 1980s, the government also promoted the settlement of the region by Bengalis, much of it, Amlai says, under pressure.

"Many of them say they were forced to go there," says Amlai, 35, who now lives in east London with his wife and child. "Many of them were homeless or beggars, and they were taken there and promised that they would have land and money."

The government signed a peace treaty with the Jumma in 1997 and said it would remove the military camps. "But the military are still there," Amlai says. "More settlers are arriving and the treaty is not being honoured."

Amlai is being supported in his campaign to draw attention to the crisis by Survival International, which is asking MPs to put pressure on the British government to raise concerns with their Bangladeshi counterparts. "Bangladesh's campaign against the Jumma has been genocidal," says Stephen Corry, Survival's director. "Successive governments have moved Bengali settlers into the region, forcing the Jumma out of their homes, making them a minority in their own land. In 1947, 98% of the hill tracts' population was indigenous; it is now less than half."

While the 1997 peace accord should have guaranteed the Jumma their rights, Corry says that this has been far from the case. "Since emergency rule was declared in January 2007, over 50 Jumma activists have been arrested, often on false charges. Many have been tortured. Ranglai Mro, leader of the Mro people, was arrested on false arms charges in February last year. He has since been sentenced to 17 years' imprisonment and is now seriously ill, having been tortured in police custody. Survival believes he was targeted because he protested about the eviction of 750 of his people by the army in 2006."

Amlai cites another cause célèbre: Kalpana Chakma, the 23-year-old human rights activist who was abducted by the army in 1996 and is still missing. "No one knows what happened to her," he says. The army has said that she went abroad, but no Jumma believe them. It is also claimed that many Jumma girls have been taken by the Bangladeshi army and settlers and forced to marry their abductors.

Amlai says it would be difficult for him to return to Bangladesh now. "If I was back home, I don't know what my situation would be - maybe I would end up in jail or maybe I would have been killed," he says. "In 2004, I was at the UN in New York to speak about our situation and after that, when I went back, I saw things just getting worse. Whoever speaks out abroad, at the UN or in Geneva, runs the risk of having a false charge put against them, accusing them of working with terrorists."

Big changes

Much of the traditional way of life has already changed. "We used to hunt, but now the army has seized all our guns," Amlai says. Even the place names in the area have been changed, he adds.

Now Amlai is pinning his hopes on international pressure being put on the Bangladeshi government. "If there is no pressure on them to implement the peace accord, nothing happens," he says. "We want all the army bases in the area to be closed. We also want our land back, and all the illegal settlers need to go. We need full autonomy: without it, we cannot protect our land. The British government could threaten to stop aid to the Bangladesh government unless it observes the agreement."

The Bangladesh government strongly denies the claims. "We do not deny that there was abuse and torture in the past," said a spokesman. "But this information is biased, unfounded and exaggerated. He [Amlai] is referring to age-old cases." Ranglai Mro was convicted in a civilian court of serious arms charges, said the spokesman. Far from being excluded, a Jumma is one of 13 members of the Bangladesh cabinet, he added, and the area was open for anyone to visit.

The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation has launched a campaign for countries to ratify the only international law for tribal peoples, International Labour Organisation Convention 169, or ILO 169, as it is known, which recognises tribal people's land ownership rights. Survival International wants the UK government to ratify that convention.