Bangladesh: Progress on internal displacement response needed

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^{31 December 2010}

Clashes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) displaced thousands of people during 2010, despite government pledges to resolve the long-running conflict arising from intensive settlement and indigenous groups’ demands for greater autonomy. The effect of discriminatory legislation which has left hundreds of thousands of Hindu families landless and displaced also remained unaddressed.

The government’s relocation of Bengali settlers to CHT led to conflict between indigenous Jumma militias and army-backed settlers from 1977 to 1997, and widespread human rights violations including forced evictions. At least 90,000 Jumma families and 38,000 settler families were displaced as of 2000. The settlers fled to areas around army camps for safety and assistance, while indigenous people were displaced to more remote areas or into the forests, where they had little access to food and basic services such as health care and schools.

The conflict formally ended with a 1997 agreement which acknowledged CHT as a “tribal inhabited” region, and envisaged the army’s withdrawal and an end to Bengali settlement. Indigenous refugees and IDPs were to be registered and entitled to assistance while land disputes were resolved. But the settlement of Bengalis continued, and some 10,000 repatriated Jumma refugees were forced into secondary displacement.

The Awami League-led government which assumed power in 2009 committed to implement the peace accord and provide assistance and reparation to IDPs. It withdrew the army from 35 of the 300 bases in CHT and announced measures to resolve land disputes. However, new clashes triggered more displacement in 2010, and several indigenous villages were reportedly burned down in February and March. ICRC provided emergency assistance to 3,500 people who were forced to flee when their homes were destroyed.

Meanwhile, across Bangladesh, up to 1.2 million Hindu families have been dispossessed of agricultural land, with some being internally displaced and others fleeing the country. From 1974, Hindus were forcibly displaced as a result of the Vested Property Act, by which the government could confiscate property from any “enemy of the state”. Although the Act was repealed in 2001, the land grabbing has continued, and the government has not taken measures to restitute land or compensate those affected.

25 June 2009: Land grabbing and violence against indigenous groups continue

On 13 June, 74 families including 56 indigenous families, were evicted from their land in a series of attacks at Khatirpur in the north-western sub-district of Porsha. The attack was led by 200 armed supporters of a Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) adherent, allegedly backed by the police. Some days later, attackers tried to occupy land of 17 more indigenous families in Nachole sub-district. Protestors on 21 June called for the property to be returned to evicted families and the land grabbers arrested.

Meanwhile, in Khagrachari district in the south-eastern Chittagong Hill Tracts, indigenous people and settlers clashed over disputed land. The indigenous people launched protests against continuing attempts to grab their land, in response to reports that they had attacked the settlers to take back control of land settled between 1981 and 1982.

Twenty years of armed struggle in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), pitting the armed forces and Bengali settlers against indigenous groups seeking greater autonomy, formally ended in 1997 with the signing of the CHT Peace Accord. The accord granted cultural recognition and a degree of self-government to indigenous groups and foresaw the rehabilitation of internally displaced people (IDPs), but the situation of displaced indigenous people and Bengalis has not been resolved.

Insecurity continues to generate new displacements. These go largely undocumented because of restrictions on independent reporting, but some sources suggest that tens of thousands of people have been affected. Insecurity is also preventing IDPs from achieving a durable solution to their displacement. Most who are unable to return to their places of origin cite a combination of insecurity and a lack of guarantees for political activity as their main obstacles.

There is disagreement over who should be recognised as an IDP. Under the CHT Peace Accord, all parties recognise displaced indigenous people as IDPs, but the indigenous groups refuse to accept the Bengali settlers they have displaced from recently occupied land as such. Their position is not in line with the common definition of an IDP, which does not require a person to have lived in a place for a long period before they can be recognised as displaced from it. Given the background to the conflict, it may make sense to offer settlers compensation and safe alternatives to their discontinued occupation of the land in question, but any attempt to do so should be on the basis that they too should be recognized as IDPs and treated as such under the accord.

There is a also a general lack of up-to-date information and monitoring of internal displacement, some of whom were displaced as many as 35 years ago, so it is unclear what their settlement intentions might have been and whether they have achieved a durable solution.

Disputed land rights remain the most important issue. Given a context of continuing forced evictions and expropriation of ancestral lands, the commission set up to settle disputes needs to establish land ownership rights prior to undertaking a cadastral survey. By doing so, land would be registered to its original owners rather than the land grabbers.

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^{30 December 2011}