http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/57395072

'Life is not ours' : land and human rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh : the report of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in the south-eastern corner of Bangladesh is the homeland of 12 ethnic groups who number approximately 600,000. These hill peoples differ from the Muslim Bengali majority, the larger groups being Buddhist or Hindu and the smaller ones either Christian or having a traditional belief system. Between 1957 and 1963 a large hydro-electric scheme absorbed 40% of their cultivable land, forcing thousands of them to flee to India. Nor was the political autonomy these peoples hoped for forthcoming in the decades that followed. Rather, reports of long-term and severe oppression reached the international community, triggering the establishment of an Independent Commission to investigate human rights violations in the CHT. This Commission issued its report in May 1991 and the report has been updated twice since. Read together, the report and its updates show evidence of ongoing serious violations of the rights of the hill peoples. The most recent update issued in April 1994 concludes that conditions have remained largely unchanged over the period of the Commission's investigations. It describes the current situation in the following terms. The CHT remains under military occupation and counter-insurgency activities include the forced relocation of the population into cluster villages. CHT refugees taking shelter in India have not felt it is safe to return. Development aid has tended to maintain the military presence either directly or indirectly and the restoration of parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh has not produced any meaningful autonomy for these peoples. The Commission concludes the update with a series of recommendations to the Government of Bangladesh. These include measures to restore land to the hill peoples, to demilitarize the CHT and to create autonomous institutions run by the peoples themselves. The Commission has further recommended that donor governments stop all aid that facilitates the military presence in the CHT and concentrate their resources on programmes which support self-determination for the hill peoples.

Open All Close All