In 2000, the Task Force on Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons submitted a list of indigenous families and Bengali families to be rehabilitated. The PCJSS and Jumma Refugee Welfare Association rejected the list because it contained thousands of Bengali settlers who came to the CHT during the transmigration programs of 1979 to 1984. When the government members would not agree to exclude Bengalis from the refugee list, the PCJSS and the Jumma Refugee Welfare Association boycotted the Task Force, thereby effectively shutting it down.¹

According to the chairman of the Task Force in August of 1999, 80 percent of the repatriated tribals received their aid package.²

Approximately 70,000 indigenous people fled to the Indian state of Tripura during the insurgency in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, with another 100,000 internally displaced persons within Bangladesh. Although the repatriation efforts had already been ongoing for years, the CHT Accord established a Task Force on Rehabilitation of Returnee Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons to expedite the repatriation process. The Government of Bangladesh signed a 20-point aid package agreement in 1997 in which it committed itself to providing food assistance, house-building money, and livestock to returning refugees. Most of the refugees did return to Bangladesh; however, a majority became IDPs because their land or houses were occupied and the land restitution program was not implemented.³

The repatriation of the Jumma or Chakma refugees was an antecedent to the signing of the Accord, which took place on 02 December 1997. Starting in April, nearly 11,000 refugees had returned home at the signing of the agreement.⁴ In a period of 15 days, starting on November 21 and ending December 6, a total of 13,024 tribal refugees making up 2,547 families returned to the CHT from different refugee camps in the Indian state of Tripura. As of December 6, the number of remaining refugees was estimated to be around 44,359 in six refugee camps in Tripura.⁵ According to reports from a December 1997 meeting of the Awami League and the tribal refugee welfare association, around 31,000 refugees remained in the refugee camps in Tripura at the time of the meeting. The sixth and final phase of the repatriation process from the Tripura camps began in January 1998.⁶

From January 1 to January 9, 1998, a total of 7,916 Chakma refugees returned to the CHT.⁷ In the first few days of February, some 1,025 tribal refugees returned from refugee camps.⁸ In February and March, an estimated 10,000 tribal people from the Indian state of Mizoram crossed into southeastern Bangladesh. Many of these refugees “had found their abandoned homes taken over.”⁹

No further developments observed.

No further developments observed.

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On 2 December 2003, the Chairman of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council, Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma, gave a press conference calling on the government withdraw cases remaining in military courts against members of the PCJSS and their relatives.”¹⁰

Chowdhury reports that, as of 2002, of the roughly one thousand cases involving JSS members in the courts, the government had withdrawn or dismissed 461 cases or 45 percent.¹¹

No specific information was found on the number of cases withdrawn this year.