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UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous IssuesSecond Session UN Headquarters, New York12 – 23 May 2003 Joint statement by Sanjeeb DrongFor Agenda Item 4 (d): Human Rights Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me this opportunity to speak. My name is Sanjeeb Drong and I am representing the Bangladesh Indigenous Peoples’ Forum, a national forum for indigenous peoples of Bangladesh. I speak on behalf of my organization and on behalf of Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity, Taungya and Peace Campaign Group. As in many other parts of the world, the indigenous peoples of Bangladesh are facing serious human rights violations. Our land, forest and territory where we lived have been taken away without our free prior and informed consent, to build National parks, dams, Eco-parks, reserve forests, protected areas, tourism and even establishing military bases and training centres. In some of the areas known as “reserved forests”, not only are the original inhabitants regarded as encroachers and treated as serfs, but they are also victimized by assaults of Forest guards and hundreds of oppressive criminal cases. It is our misfortunate perhaps that we are discriminated against not only as indigenous people, but also as linguistic and religious minorities. Some of the worst cases of human rights violations have been perpetrated in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Due to a government-sponsored population transfer programme, hundreds of thousands of non-indigenous people were settled on private and common lands of indigenous people. This may be said to be another form of state-sponsored “ethnic cleansing”. The indigenous people thus displaced have not been able to regain possession of their lands. On the other hand, settlers are receiving regular food grain grants from the Government of Bangladesh, while the indigenous people remain internally displaced and without rehabilitation until today. The Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord of 1997 provides for rehabilitation of the displaced indigenous people, for the settlement of land disputes and for land grants to indigenous people. None of these have taken place. Why? Because there is no mechanism to ensure that the peace agreement between the Government of Bangladesh and the Jana Sanghati Samity is implemented. In fact, there are no mechanisms today to ensure that intra-state peace agreements between states and peoples and minorities within a state are implemented, whether within the UN system or in regional human rights processes. Perhaps the Permanent Forum can play an informal role in encouraging governments to implement peace agreements, such as in the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, in Northeast India, Burma, and in South and Central America. The non-implementation of many crucial elements of the CHT Accord is jeopardizing the fragile peace process in the Hill Tracts. Many other such processes in different parts of the world are also similarly threatened. Land dispossession is a problem in other parts of Bangladesh as well, in the south, northwest, northeast, and north-central Bangladesh including the greater Mymensingh area, which is my traditional home. However, large parts of the territories of our Garo people are still considered as a “reserved Forest”, which is guarded by Forest guards carrying guns. At one time our territory was constitutionally recognized as a specially administered area. That is no more, and without our consent. In 2001, the Bangladesh government started a programme to establish “Eco-parks” on Khasi and Garo land in Moulvibazar district for so-called tourism development. 1,000 indigenous families are threatened with eviction from their ancestral land. Similarly, many other aboriginal lands, even those with private titles, have been unfairly and illegally taken over by non-indigenous people, in violation of the East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950 (Section 97), which restricts transfer of aboriginal land title to non-aboriginals. According to the ILO Convention No. 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Populations, to which Bangladesh is a party, states parties are obliged to prevent land dispossession of indigenous and tribal people because of their ignorance of law or otherwise. The Convention also provides that rights of ownership of the peoples concerned over the lands that they traditionally occupy shall be recognized. In reality, we do not see the reflection of this convention in our lives as the Government of Bangladesh as ignoring these provisions. We feel that this may partly be the result of indigenous people not having direct access to meetings of the ILO, which are restricted to governments, employers and trades unions. If the UN itself open up to create such a high level body as this Permanent Forum, we would like to hope that ILO to can open up too, in whatever manner is deemed appropriate. Other acts of discrimination are common in Bangladesh. On 19n April, 2003 non-indigenous settlers burnt down an indigenous village in Khagrachari district. Nothing substantive was done to punish those guilty by either the police or by other authorities. About two years ago, one Buddhist monk was assaulted by security forces in Khagrachari district without any reason. The UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance visited the region and condemned this act in his report. But the situation has not improved much since then. Mr. Chairman, we are fearful that the situation of human rights of indigenous peoples of Bangladesh will not improve without the constitutional recognition of the indigenous peoples, the implementation of the CHT Peace Accord, and the inclusion of indigenous peoples’ representatives in the appropriate policy-making bodies, including the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs and the Special Affairs Division, in a substantive manner. Mr. Chairman, we would urge the Permanent Forum to consider the following matters:
Thank you. |
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