Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury’s Reviews > Mru: Hill People On The Border Of Bangladesh > Status Update

In all of these activities,councils will have to come in for the approval,or to secure the consent of the govt,which reserves the right to dissolve the councils. ... Last but not least,the local councils will have no authority to order the military forces out of their districts-they may well prove to not interested in doing this,since new "political solution"falls far short of the demands of the"fighters for peace".

Each council may draw up its own regulations for running the affairs of the district; each will be responsible for the maintenance of law and order and will, for this purpose, recruit a district police force; each will assess the social and economic needs of the people, levy taxes, and initiate development projects financially supported by the central government.

In the spring of 1989, just in time for the UN conference on human rights…adopted 3 new bills providing for the constitution of local government councils in the districts of Rangamati, Khagrachori & Banderban.A majority of seats on the councils, as well as the chairmanship is reserved for the local tribesmen.

One thing is certain:without foreign aid the government of BD couldn't flourish.Would it be asking too much to require the BD govt as a small remuneration for aid-to allow inhabitants of Hill Tracts to survive?Would it be asking too much to require the govt to discontinue its military & police terrorism,instead to grant ethnic groups their own administration & allow them to use their own land and their own reserves?

By means of terrorism, resistance to Bangali expansion can be repressed; but it can not be completely eliminated until the entire indigenous population has been either exterminated or driven off. Surely no one believes that this Final Solution for the non-Muslim inhabitants of the Hili Tracts would in fact at the same time solve the problems of Bangladesh.

Mru hv not been spared...not only have 2 strategic roads been constructed through their region,bt army units have been stationed in valleys of southern rivers,so that life in villages is no Ionger safe...Bangali settlement has resulted in forced eviction of large groups of Mru.In January 1983, army forced Anok Mru in 3 mouza bordering the Ctg Plains 2 leave their villages without any compensation.

For the donor countries it amounted to sheer hypocrisy to deny support to anything obviously serving the purposes of genocide, while allocating at the same time funds for such useful purposes as the development of communication facilities which not only benefited military operations, but also facilitated the harassment, displacement, expropriation and expulsion of the indigenous population.

The tribal inhabitants of the Hill Tracts, on the other hand, whose chosen representative, the Chakma Chief, had taken sides with Pakistan, were suspected of collaboration. They were powerless against land-grabbing Muslim Bangalis who, during the turmoil of war, had settled in their villages. The search for hidden collaborators offered paramilitary troops a good excuse to maraud around in the hills.

The first large stream of refugees left the northern Hill Tracts in 1971. Along with these people there also fled Hindu Bangalis from the plains area bordering the Tracts.

Everyday life goes on, but it is changing- and not for the better. Not only is the fertility of the land decreasing- land upon which too many people's existence is already dependent- but the hill people's right to the land itself is being disputed.