There were no reports indicating that the Accord Implementation Committee met this year.

There were no reports indicating that the Accord Implementation Committee met this year.

The Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord called for the formation of an internal verification committee to monitor and report on the implementation of the Accord. The Accord Implementation Committee was initiated in 1998 and comprised of a member nominated by the Prime Minister, the Chairperson of the Task Force on Refugees, and Shantu Larma, President of the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (English: United People’s Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts), or PCJSS.¹

Operationally, the committee was barely functional: several meetings were said to have been held from March to November.² No recommendations or reports were released to the press or made publically available.

No further developments observed.

No progress or developments were reported on resolving land disputes. Sadly, the end result of decades of Bengali migration and displacement of the indigenous population was not compatible with the political vision of restoring traditional land use in the CHT to the indigenous peoples. Several hundred thousand Bengali inhabitants of CHT land stood as concrete obstacles to that political vision. No voluntary relocation program for Bengalis was ever initiated by the government of Bangladesh. In contrast, the government continued to provide free food rations to anywhere from 27, 000 to 50,000 Bengali settlers in the CHT. This continued government support to the Bengali settlers in the CHT was noted in 2006 as an “essential component in ensuring that Bengali settlers from the plains do not return to their original home regions.”³

The latest PCJSS report stated that 5,130 acres of land in Bandarban, 25,375 acres of land in Lama, 6,397 acres in Alikadam, and 3,175 acres in Naikhyangchari had been leased by the government of Bangladesh or the District Commissioner to firms without the consent of the Council. In addition to leases, the government had also acquired a total of 94,066 acres across 7 different upazilas in the CHT.⁴

In January 2005 Bengali Muslim settlers from Maischari cluster village in Khagrachari district, aided by the army stationed in the CHT, built houses on the recorded lands of indigenous Jummas at Gamaridhala in the Khagrachari district according to a letter dated January 2005 by Ushatan Talukder, the Secretary for Political Affairs of the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS).⁵

The Land Commission was not functional in 2004 and no further developments were reported on land issues. At a 2004 conference at Dhaka university, Dr. Harun-ur Rashid, the dean of social sciences, stated that Bengali settlers continued to migrate to the CHT on a daily basis and that the ratio of indigenous peoples to Bengali settlers in 2004 was roughly 55:45.⁶

The Dhaka Daily Star reported that the government had decided to stop giving food rations to “65, 000 indigenous people who became refugees in CHT after returning from the Indian state Tripura following the 1997 peace accord” (Xinhua General News Service, 2003). The tribal refugees “are still awaiting the return of their lands occupied by the Bengali settlers, and demand the government to rehabilitate the settlers elsewhere.” However, the government’s sympathies appeared to have been with the Bengali settlers. The Daily Star reported that the Prime Minister was finalizing a plan to “give permanent resident status to over 26,000 families of Bengali settlers living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).”⁷

On 2 December 2003, the Chairman of CHT Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council, Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma, gave a press conference calling on the government to fully implement the 1997 agreement. Larma called on the government to rehabilitate the 3,055 tribal families who returned to the CHT to find their lands occupied. “Around 40 Jumma villages still remained occupied by the settlers.”⁸

No further developments occurred this year.

The Bangladeshi parliament passed The Chittagong Hill Tracts Land Disputes Resolution Commission Act of 2001. The Jumma community rejected the act and the Land Dispute Commission for several reasons. First, they saw the act as an attempt to legally justify the illegal possession of Jumma lands by Bengali settlers. Second, the act gave the Chairperson the final word on land disputes in the event of a lack of consensus among other members. Third, the act excluded internally displaced Jummas from the ambit of the Land Commission.