Peace in our time?

It was a moment of triumph for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League government. On a glorious winter’s day and before the packed galleries of Khagrachari Stadium, she released white pigeons and floated balloons carrying the message “Long Live Peace,” as tribal and Bengali artists danced and sang together in celebration of a new dawn for the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).   “We want no more bloodshed, we want peace sustained in the Hill Tracts and peaceful co-existence of its people,” she said. “We want to forget the past and look forward to a bright new future.”   Last month, the prime minister returned to Khagrachari for the first time since that day in February 1998, when she had observed the formal end of a 25-year campaign for autonomy waged by the tribal Shanti Bahini guerrillas.    Her stage this time was the same; the large concrete bowl of the town’s football stadium which, despite eleventh-hour efforts to apply a lick of paint, had fallen into a sorry state of disrepair. Crumbling round the edges, it perhaps mirrored the condition of the peace treaty enacted within its walls to so much fanfare 15 years ago.    With one eye on the upcoming election - the Prime Minister used her November 11 speech to boldly reel off her current government’s achievements for the region, which include a new university in Rangamati, solar power and electricity to all households, and improved communication systems. A partisan crowd of 50,000 Awami League supporters roared their approval. But beyond the stadium walls, the people tell a different story.    The 12 recognised indigenous groups of the CHT are collectively known as the Jumma. The three largest are the Chakma, the Marma, and the Tripura. While each tribe can be identified by cultural and linguistic differences, they are bound together by Buddhism. Across the three hill districts of Khagrachari, Rangamati and Bandarban, however, the native population is now in a minority. Depending on who you speak to, they are also losing land at a faster rate than the government is returning it to them. Despite the heady promises of Hasina’s 1998 speech, the tourist sector remains woefully underdeveloped, territorial disputes persist, and sporadic violence is still the norm rather than the exception.    Land disputes unresolved The treaty signed on December 2, 1997 by the political platform of the Jumma people - Parbattya Chhattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) - and the Bangladesh government called on the rebels to lay down their arms, in exchange for 50,000tk each and the return of land. Initially, 739 insurgents took up the amnesty offer, and they surrendered their weapons at the Khagrachari Stadium ceremony held two months later. It has not been a tit-for-tat process, however. While praising the rebels for having “set the example” during her return speech last month, the prime minister conceded also that 22 of the 77 sections of the peace accord are still to be implemented.   PCJSS Chariman Santu Larma told journalists on the 16th anniversary of the signing ceremony earlier this week that although indigenous people had been appointed to some important posts including state minister for CHT affairs and chairman of the CHT Development Board, the government was not “sincere or interested” in enacting the accord. “The progress remains the same like before,” he said. “Another government is about to expire but no effective steps have been taken towards full implementation”.    “The biggest problem of the indigenous people who come to me for legal advice is the occupation of their traditional land by settler Bengalis,” an executive member of the Asian Indigenous Lawyers Network, based in Khagrachari, tells Weekend Tribune. “My clients have no registrations, no documents, no papers; it is just a traditional system. But in the court process you first need the land report by the police, but they are also Bengalis so they give the report on behalf of Bengalis. It is very racial.”   Local NGO Trinamul Unnayan Sangstha (TUS) says indigenous people for generations were using their traditional knowledge and land tenure system, which did not call for paperwork to be submitted to the authorities (see boxed text, right). TUS says: “When the standard level of awareness of the indigenous people concerning formal registration was achieved in the early 1980s, the registration process was paused.” It has yet to restart; the NGO puts the current landless figure among the tribal population at around 75%.    “It is a big problem in the CHT contract because the land commission is still not implemented,” says the lawyer, who is also a member of the Adivasi Facilitative Group (AFG), “The prime minister said that 70% of the land transfers have been fulfilled but the local people know this is not true.”    In her speech, Sheikh Hasina acknowledged “some problems and disputes over land” and pledged to fully implement the provisions of the peace treaty, if re-elected. She said the CHT Land Dispute Resolution Commission Act 2013 will be executed “after its necessary amendment”, but deep political divisions remain. In June, leaders of ten parties said the draft version differed from the text agreed at several inter-ministerial meetings, while ruling 14-party alliance lawmaker Rashed Khan Menon said the amending bill states that grabbed land would be “outside the jurisdiction of the Land Commission”. As a result, he estimated that only 35% of land-related disputes in the region can be solved this way.    CHT Land Commission Secretary Abdul Hamid said this week they had received approximately 5,000 land dispute cases, of which “around 3,000” were at the final stage. These figures were immediately disputed by the Secretary General of CHT Jumma Refugee Welfare Association, Santusito Chakma Bakul, who said the number of cases would be “10 times higher” if internally displaced people had been considered.    “Not a single percent (of land) has been transferred,” a district pastor tells Weekend Tribune, on condition of anonymity. He says the government wants to fulfil the peace accord but the Bengali people protest as they know they will have to leave the area. “So when the government takes steps to fulfil the contract, the settlers make many problems and cause collisions with the indigenous people. It is a political problem for the current government,” he says.   Not that a change in government in January would help the indigenous people; BNP leader Khaleda Zia and her right-wing allies did not even recognise the treaty when it was signed in 1997, and they enforced a hartal on the day of the 1998 stadium ceremony.    Hill Tracts still tensed  There were forces within the indigenous communities, also, that protested the negotiated settlement. Several groups of Jumma people - Pahari Chattra Parishad (PCP or Hill Students Council), Pahari Gano Parishad (PGP or Hill Peoples Council), and Hill Women Federation (HWF) - argued that the accord failed to fulfil their main demands for full autonomy, the restoration of traditional land rights, the demilitarisation of the hill districts, and the withdrawal of Bengali settlers.   The United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF) is a separatist movement formed in December 1998 by disgruntled former PJCSS leaders who felt the political party had betrayed the Jumma people by signing the peace accord. This week, UPDF Press Secretary Niron Chakma described it as a “mockery” and said the hill people “are not getting anything that may create hope among them”. The group’s student wing, the PCP, enforced a day-long road blockade during the prime minister’s recent visit.   “The problem is terrorism,” an official at the Awami League office in Khagrachari tells Weekend Tribune. “All the time the UPDF have big arms in their hands, paid for through money collection, killings, and kidnappings. The day before our leader’s visit, our workers were distributing leaflets, and the UPDF told them ‘Go away’. They have a violent mind. They have no respect for Bangladesh government and they don’t accept Bangladeshis or the prime minister coming here”.   The PCJSS have demanded that the government ban the UPDF for their “terrorist activities” in the hill districts.   “The Chakma are crazy people,” says a senior figure of the district special branch of police. “The peace accord is working, but they do not maintain the law. They are doing what they like.”   Military overload The 80,000-strong 24th Infantry Division of the Bangladesh Army is charged with maintaining security in the CHT. In the build up to the first prime ministerial visit in 15 years, the regular army were supplemented in and around Khagrachari town by NSI, Rab and the border security force (BDR).    But while Article D.17 in the peace accord commits the military to scaling back its substantial presence to six permanent cantonments (camps) -  one at each of the three district headquarters plus Alikadam, Ruma and Dighinala - the number of military personnel has not diminished significantly since 1997.    “In Chittagong town area there is only one big cantonment, but here there are many,” says the pastor, “In one kilometre in CHT you will find two camps, this is only to control the indigenous people.”   The 250km-long Korean Demilitarised Zone is, paradoxically, the most heavily militarised border in the world, but nobody lives there. In Jammu and Kashmir, a reported one million troops are stationed either side of the Line of Control (LOC), but the population there is over 12 million. In the Hill District of Bangladesh, by contrast, there is a military person for every six Jumma civilians, making this the most militarised region per capita on earth.    The government in Dhaka maintains that it cannot close the camps until security can be guaranteed for all local people. “That is secretly for the Bengali people,” says the pastor. “Where the Bengali people and the indigenous people have a problem, and they clash, the military will support the Bengali people.”    PCJSS Press Secretary Mongal Kumar Chakma also claims the army continues to interfere in the functions of the civil administration including law and order, while in June the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission called upon the security forces “to discharge their duties with the highest level of integrity and impartiality”. Its statement cited several incidents of alleged persecution, including the eviction of 40 Tripura families after a reported attack by around 200 settlers in Gomati Bazar.    Peace in our time? Perhaps what the return visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Khagrachari last month highlighted more than anything else, is that 15 years after a number of rebels laid down their weapons, the underlying cause of the tensions in the Chittagong Hill Tracts remains unresolved.    “If the government is sincere about the indigenous people, nothing is impossible,” says the pastor, “(But) the prime minister is sincere only by mouth. She says ‘We want to give you this and that’ but practically in her work, we don’t see the evidence. We do not believe that the prime minister can fulfil the peace treaty because in the last five years (of the current government) we have not seen any success.”    Sheikh Hasina will be hoping for more time to prove the doubters wrong.     Traditional vs mainstream governance system  The CHT region is divided into three circles named Chakma, Mong and Bomang, and each is headed by a chief who is considered as a Raja. The Circle Chief appoints a Headman to oversee each grass-roots unit (mouza), and each mouza is sub-divided into smaller units called Para or Adam at the individual village level. Each village is placed under a Karbari appointed by the Headman.   The CHT Regulations Act 1900 made the Headman responsible for collecting taxes in their mouza and empowered them to dispense justice in their Raja Courts, in accordance with the customary laws and traditions of the Hill people. Because the laws are not written down, disputes are resolved by an individual interpretation.   The lawyer says this whole system is under threat: “In CHT there is the traditional system and there is the local mainstream government system such as a magistrate court and district judge, which are staffed by Bengali people. Recently the legislative body said ‘We don’t care about traditional Circles, Headmen and Karbari; we will just process cases our legal way in the CHT context, the same as for outsiders and the mainstream. We don’t want to follow the 1900 manual’.”   Historical Hill Tracts Early Period   Very little is known about the region’s history prior to the advent of British colonial rule. It is generally assumed that the present-day  Hill District was settled by “nomads” transmigrating from one area to another.  The Chakmas became the largest and most dominant indigenous group  at least as early as the sixteenth century.   Early contacts with the British   1757 The British East India company becomes the virtual rulers of Bengal after the battle of Plassey, but limits its role to tax collection. The Chakmas exert the greatest influence and their kings exercise almost total control over indigenous society.   1760 Three districts of Burdwan, Midnapore and Chittagong are ceded to the British in a secret treaty.    1777-1787 War breaks out between the British and the Chakma.    1829 Statement by (the British) Commissioner of Chittagong says “The hill tribes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts are not British subjects...and we have no rights to interfere with their internal arrangements”.   British Rule (1860-1947)   1860 Act XXII constitutes the Chittagong Hill Tracts as a separate district.    1882 CHT sub-divided into three separate circles: Chakma, Mong and Bohmong.   1900 British crown enacts the CHT Regulation Act (popularly known as the CHT Manual), recognising the Chiefs and the traditional institutions in the administrative system   1935 Government of India Act designates the district as a “Totally Excluded Area”, formally recognising the region. Pakistan Period (1947-1971)   1947 Indian sub-continent partitioned with the CHT included in Pakistan, even though 97% non-Muslim.   1960 A hydro-electric dam constructed at Kaptai submerges 40% of all cultivable CHT lands under water and displaces one-third of the total population from their ancestral homes.    1964 Pakistan government revokes the special status of the CHT, removing all legal or constitutional safeguards.   Bangladesh Period (1971-present)   16 December 1971 Bangladesh wins independence but the new constitution fails to address the concerns of the CHT peoples.    February 1972 A delegation led by M N Larma, the sitting MP from the region, meets Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to push for CHT autonomy, retention of the CHT Regulation 1900, recognition of the three Circle Chiefs and aan on the influx of non-indigenous ethnic communities.   March 1972 Larma founds the PCJSS as a  regional political party, to which a military wing – Shanti Bahini – is later added.   August 15, 1975 Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman assassinated in a military coup; Larma goes underground to wage an insurgency against the Bangladesh government.   December 2, 1997 Peace Accord signed between the PCJSS and the Government of Bangladesh.   February 10, 1998 Weapons handover ceremony at Khagrachari Stadium   November 11, 2013 Hasina returns to Khagrachari