From: sahmed@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Saif Ahmed)
Subject: CHT: Activities of our glorious army.
Organization: Oberlin College Computer Science
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 23:55:14 GMT
X-Posted-From: occs.cs.oberlin.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu


                   Copyright 1992 Newspaper Publishing PLC
                                The Independent

                          December  10, 1992, Thursday

HEADLINE: Dhaka accused of brutality against its tribal peoples

BYLINE: By CAROLINE MOOREHEAD

 BODY:
    IN APRIL, two Chittagong Hill Tract girls were attacked by boys
from a nearby village of Bengali settlers, who tried to rape them. One
of the girls defended herself with a knife, wounding one boy. The
other boys fled and reported the incident to their village.

    Within minutes the Chittagong Hill Tract ''village'' of Logang in
 Bangladesh - many of the tribal people have been forcibly settled in
villages surrounded by the military - was besieged by furious
Bengalis. Among them were soldiers and members of the paramilitary
forces that patrol the area.

    The tribal people were herded into the houses and the doors
locked. The attackers then set fire to them. When the fires died down,
the bodies of the tribal people were thrown on to trucks, together
with the few still alive, and tipped into open pits.

    Normally, no one outside the Chittagong Hill Tracts would have
heard of the incident. The area, ruled over by the Bangladesh
military, has been sealed off for the past 15 years. But the massacre
took place three days before the annual Chittagong Hill Tract festival
of Biju, and a large number of friends and relations of the tribal
people were in the neighbourhood, including a number of lawyers,
university teachers and members of parliament.

    They set up a commission of inquiry to take evidence from the few
eyewitnesses who had survived. Pressed by the outside world, the
Bangladesh government admitted to 13 dead. The military conceded that
the number might perhaps be closer to 140. The commission believes the
true figure to be over 1200.

    Details of the massacre are being reported to the United Nations
in New York today by Bimal Bhikkhu, a Buddhist monk from the
Chittagong Hill Tracts. Today is Human Rights Day, and to mark the
occasion, as well as launch 1993 as the year of ethnic minorities, the
UN has invited members of ethnic groups from all around the world to
submit evidence of human rights abuses in their countries.

    The first massacre of tribal people by the military took place,
according to Mr Bhikkhu, who was in London this week, in 1980, and
there have been at least 10 major killings since. ''Killings go on all
the time,'' he says.  ''Torture, beatings, arrests. Many people have
been driven into the forests where they live like animals.''

    He plans to ask the UN today not only for guarantees that the
tribal people will be safe if they return, but that their lands be
returned to them, and UN offices opened in the tribal areas.


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| | Saifuddin Ahmed                                                        |
| | sahmed@occs.cs.oberlin.edu                                             |
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh