Cracks in the Hills: The Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Fight for Indigenous Rights

04/10/2025

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The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) comprises of a mosaic of forested ridges, river valleys and distinctive hill societies in southeastern Bangladesh. But it has long been a place where dispossession, state security logic and resource extraction impacted the everyday lives of Indigenous peoples. In recent years those pressures have escalated into recurrent violence, forced displacement and systematic denial of political and land rights. What is happening in the CHT today is not merely a local or law-and-order problem. It is a profound human-rights crisis centered on the dignity, land and political survival of the indigenous tribes of Bangladesh.

In December 1997 the Government of Bangladesh and the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) signed the CHT Peace Accord. It was a pact that promised demilitarization, the return of lands to Indigenous inhabitants and the setting up of local councils. It also talked of a Land Commission to safeguard traditional land rights. For decades the region had been governed by heavy-handed militarization and policies that encouraged lowland settlement in Indigenous territories. The accord offered a framework to reverse that trajectory.

But implementation has been partial at best. Key provisions like full withdrawal of army units and effective functioning of the Land Commission have not been realized. That failure has allowed land grabs, the expansion of settler colonies and continued military presence. It undermines the accord’s intent. Indigenous political leaders, civic groups and monitoring organizations repeatedly warn that the non-implementation is not an oversight but an ongoing structural denial of rights.

Two interlinked processes explain much of today’s crisis in the hills. First is militarization through which large numbers of army and paramilitary camps were set up in the hills. It was justified by state narratives of counter-insurgency or border security. Their presence shapes daily life of the indigenous people in the form of checkpoints, arbitrary arrests and restrictions on movement. There is also a constant surveillance of Indigenous activists. Second is state-promoted settlement and agrarian “development” policies which have encouraged the migration of Bengali settlers into this predominantly Indigenous areas. Land was previously governed by customary communal tenure. But formal registration and commercial transactions have created openings for expropriation.

Reports by Indigenous organizations and human-rights bodies document widespread cases of clashes that leave families homeless and intimidated. Local accounts and monitoring groups also point to new pressures from mining, plantations and infrastructure projects that rarely secure prior and informed consent of Indigenous communities. The result is a multiple-front assault on both material survival and cultural continuity of these tribes.

The last two years have seen episodic but violent clashes in the hills. Some of which have drawn international attention. Indigenous groups and civil-society networks have documented attacks on protestors and students, inflammatory communal incidents and lethal force used against unarmed local people during disputes. International mechanisms and UN experts have repeatedly expressed alarm and urged impartial inquiries and accountability for perpetrators.

Domestic media and regional press have also reported deadly confrontations in 2025. These episodes are not isolated. They are symptomatic of a polity where rights frameworks exist on paper but fail in practice.

At the heart of the struggle is land. Land is not just an economic asset but it is the locus of cultural practices, spiritual life and collective memory. Indigenous customary systems of land tenure in the CHT are governed by traditional institutions. When national legal processes convert land into individual, marketable property, Indigenous communities are left vulnerable to dispossession. Implementing the Land Commission with teeth and real powers could have been a fundamental corrective.

Beyond land, Indigenous peoples in the CHT assert rights to political autonomy and self-governance. The Peace Accord’s local councils were designed to empower Jumma communities. But weakening or bypassing these institutions undermines the right to meaningful participation in decisions that affect their futures. International standards including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), require states to protect Indigenous political, cultural and economic rights. These are obligations Bangladesh must fully embrace.

Short-term humanitarian relief like food, shelter and medical aid is necessary in moments of crisis, but without structural redress it becomes a bandage on a deep wound. The CHT needs a two-track response like immediate protections for communities under threat (independent investigations into violence, protection of displaced persons, cessation of forced evictions) and a long-term political-legal roadmap that completes the 1997 Accord commitments (withdrawal of troops, functioning Land Commission, secure customary tenure, local autonomy).

Accountability is essential to ensure lasting peace. Where security forces or settlers perpetrate abuses, impartial investigations and prosecutions must follow. Where state policy incentivizes settlement or resource extraction without Indigenous consent, those policies must be reviewed and reformed. International actors can play a supportive role not by imposing solutions, but by at least conditioning diplomatic, economic and development engagement on demonstrable progress toward rights-based remedies.

The recent flare up in the hills is about the justice for a minor rape victim from the Marma community. The indigenous people were protesting under the banner of Jumma Chhatra Parishad and demanding the arrest of the three accused of rape. But when the Army arrested the leader of the protests, clashes followed demanding immediate release. The clash between the protestors and the army turned violent leading to the death of 3 individuals and leaving almost 40 people injured. The use of excessive force by army becomes evident here. However there were counter protests by the Bengalis claiming that the protest by the tribes was a threat to the nation. While mainstream media continue to minimize the issue to a law and order situation, the CHT diaspora have been vocal and pointing out the systemic nature of the violence. While curfew followed and protestors were forced to hide, allegations of large scale loot were made. Such is the complicity and silence around the violations that Suhas Chakma, the Rights and Risks Analysis Group Director appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to intervene.

Interestingly the interim Government of Bangladesh claimed India’s involvement in fuelling recent violence in Khagrachhari. India has rejected the claims and asked the government to introspect. The allegation of foreign hand is often used as a prelude to violently crush down protests.

A nation’s democratic credibility lies in its capability to ensure and institutionalize the rights of minority – be it India, Bangladesh or any other nation. The people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts do not ask for charity. They demand the fulfilment of rights long promised and a political settlement that recognizes them as citizens with land rights and political voice. That requires political will, legal reform and a genuine commitment to redressing past wrongs. The alternative is a renewed cycle of displacement, violence and cultural erasure.

The recent incident cannot be seen in isolation from the long term alienation that the hill tribes may have faced. A reconciliation is possible only with the acknowledgement of the wrongdoings of the past. Using the hill tract people as a pawn in Indo-Bangladesh relations will further accentuate the troubles for Bangladesh’s interim government which is yet to acquire legitimacy.