In 2000, the Task Force on Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons submitted a list of 90,208 indigenous families and 38,156 Bengali families to be rehabilitated. The PCJSS and Jumma Refugee Welfare Association rejected the list because it contained Bengali settlers who came to the CHT during the government sponsored transmigration program from 1979 to 1984. When the non-PCJSS members refused to exclude the Bengali settlers, the PCJSS and the Jumma Refugee Welfare Association boycotted the Task Force, thereby shutting it down.¹

In March 1999, the sixth meeting of the Task Force on Rehabilitation of Refugees and Internal Displaced Persons met to settle the issue of Bengali refugees returning to the CHT. The CHT Accord stipulated that only those owning land in the CHT and residing in the CHT would qualify for permanent residency. The PCJSS rejected any plans that gave Bengali refugees rehabilitation assistance to resettle back in the CHT. At the meeting, the government appointed Chair of the Task Force, Dipankar Talukdar, insisted that all internal refugees, tribal and non-tribal, should be rehabilitated. The PCJSS demanded that only tribal refugees be rehabilitated back to the CHT and that Bengalis be resettled by the government outside the CHT.²

Later that year in August of 1999, the Task Force reported on the number of refugees that had signed up for rehabilitation in the CHT. The Chair of the Task Force, Dipankar Talukdar, reported that “a total of 152,000 families, of which 83,525 are tribals and 68,475 are non-tribals, from the three hill districts of rangamati, khagrachhari and bandarban (sic) have filled out the government supplied forms to be entertained as internal refugees” (Xinhua News Agency, 1999). The chair indicated that non-tribal refugees displaced by the insurgency would be treated as internal refugees and rehabilitated.³

The first three clauses of this provision date back to 1989 in the original Rangamati Hill District Council Act and did not involve any change to existing legislation. The 1997 Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Accord added clause 4, which stipulated that only certified permanent residents of the CHT could vote in CHT elections. The significance of adding clause 4 was that, if fully enforced, it would give the Jumma community an electoral majority in the CHT by preventing non-permanent residents (i.e., Bengali settlers) from voting in CHT elections. This would ensure that the elected representatives for the CHT were mostly tribal members. Because the Accord granted the Circle Chiefs the authority to decide permanent residency status, the addition of clause 4 would have given tribal leaders a large degree of control over who would be eligible to vote in CHT elections.

In 1998, clause 4 was added to existing legislation as called for by the Accord. The phrase “he is a permanent resident of Hill District” was inserted into the Rangamati Hill District Council Act by Act IX of 1998. Although the change was made, the resulting new law was not enforced, or could not be enforced, for two main reasons. First, the changes in the CHT Accord were in contradiction to the Bangladeshi national constitution. Faced with this contradiction, government officials in the CHT allowed residents of a district to retain their voting rights under the Bangladesh constitution. According to clause 2 (d), of Article 122 of the Bangladesh Constitution and Section 4 of the Electoral Rolls Ordinance of 1982, “A person has the right to be included in the voter list of a constituency determined for parliamentary elections, if he/she is a resident of that constituency or considered to be a resident of that constituency by law” and “a person shall be considered to be a resident of that constituency where he/she usually or generally lives.”

The Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (English: United People’s Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts), or PCJSS, in their own publications admitted that the electoral changes called for by the CHT Accord were not in accordance with the Bangladesh constitution. The PCJSS insisted that in order to fully implement clause 4, government officials had to violate the national constitution and take away the voting rights of several hundred thousand Bengali settlers residing in the CHT, many in government sponsored camps. The government thus far had been unwilling or incapable of enforcing the new law.

The second reason why the new law was not enforced had to do with the fact that tribal authorities did not gain the level of control over the granting of permanent residency certificates in the CHT as they expected. In other words, implementing electoral reform in the CHT depended upon the successful implementation of citizenship reform. Citizenship reform, however, was not implemented and this resulted in thousands of Bengali settlers being issued permanent residency certificates by CHT Deputy Commissioners, which in turn, allowed them to be put on voter registration lists. The crafters of the 1997 Accord counted on gaining control over CHT citizenship qualifications as part of their plan to prevent Bengali settlers from voting, but Bengali settlers and government officials found ways of getting around the provision.⁴

In 1998, the former government ousted the RUF/AFRC government. RUF and the former government returned to full scale civil war in 1998.⁵

Coding for this case ceased on December 31, 1998.

After the military coup in May 1997, all foreign troops supporting the army were ordered back to their respective local bases.⁶ The leader of the military coup (Major Johnny Paul Koroma) was involved in negotiations on May 31, 1997 with senior representatives of other West African states in an effort to prevent a conflict between the foreign troops inside Sierra Leone and his Units.⁷

Together with Ivory Coast, Guinea and Ghana, Nigeria began an effort in July 1997 to restore President Kabbah to power.

According to the The Courier Mail (Queensland), foreign troops were supporting the Sierra Leone army against the RUF and those forces were not withdrawn immediately after the signing of the peace agreement.⁸

In 1998, the former government ousted the RUF/AFRC government. RUF and the former government returned to full scale civil war in 1998.¹

Coding for this case ceased on December 31, 1998.

The Neutral Monitoring Group (NMG) composed of international actors was not established in 1997. In January 1997, two months after the peace accord was signed, the SLPP government and Kamajors launched attacks against RUF units in northern Kailahun. The RUF rejected the 1996 accord and sided with the AFRC in May 1997.⁹ In May of 1997, Major Johnny Paul Koroma and his soldiers formed an alliance with RUF troops and toppled Sierra Leone’s government. President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah fled into Guinea.¹⁰

The Neutral Monitoring Group (NMG) composed of international actors was not established in 1996.

In 1998, the former government ousted the RUF/AFRC government. RUF and the former government returned to full scale civil war in 1998.¹

Coding for this case ceased on December 31, 1998.