No relief for minorities in Bangladesh as crisis looms

In some senses the term "minority" is disparaging as it denotes the weakness or powerlessness of a group. It also indicates that a group is inferior to another party and instills in that group a perpetual inferiority complex while implying it can expect to be further neglected and marginalized.

Yet being in a minority for many people and groups is an everyday reality, be it in a religious, ethnic, socio-economic or political sense.

Bangladesh has two major groups of minorities — religious and ethnic — who are visibly more weak and powerless, inferior and disenfranchised than the economically, politically and numerically dominant Muslim majority. 

Why Bangladeshi elections are a time for violence against minorities

Hindus walk past a burned down house after a Muslim mob attack in northern Bangladesh in this file photo

A rally of 19 minority rights' groups in Bangladesh has condemned "ethnic cleansing" of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

The rally also called for protection of minorities in Bangladesh, particularly Buddhists, amid rising anger against Buddhist-majority Myanmar.   

The mass gathering was held in the capital, Dhaka, on Sept. 14.

By some estimates, more than 400,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar's Rakhine State as refugees since a new round of ethnic violence flared in late August.

Islamic radicals have reportedly threatened to avenge persecution of Rohingya, prompting the Bangladesh government to beef-up security in the Buddhist-majority areas of Cox's Bazar and Chittagong.

Indigenous peoples struggle for survival in Bangladesh

An indigenous Garo girl lights a candle in Dhaka, Aug. 8, 2016, to mark the International Day for the World’s Indigenous Peoples. (ucanews.com photo)

Two disastrous events in the past month have once again highlighted the vulnerability of indigenous peoples in Bangladesh.

On June 2, a Bengali Muslim mob, enraged by the alleged murder of a local politician by indigenous men, attacked their villages at Rangamati district in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The violence reportedly left seven villagers killed, dozens injured and 300 houses destroyed, with police confirming two deaths. Among some 300 accused, only a dozen attackers were detained.

The ridiculous failure to protect indigenous peoples from violence is a prime example of state negligence toward them.

Two weeks later, deadly landslides hit southeast Bangladesh, badly affecting the Chittagong Hill Tracts in particular. Over 160 were killed, dozens injured and thousands lost their homes. Most of the victims were poor indigenous people.

This was a disaster waiting to happen. Just days before, Cyclone Mora had lashed its wild tail, causing massive deforestation and cutting off the hills from Bengali Muslim settlers. The fatalities surpassed the 2007 landslide that killed 127 when it struck the same region.

The goodwill, support and sympathy from government agencies, rights groups, environmentalists and media in the wake of the communal violence and landslides will soon run out until another disaster strikes again. Hope for justice and remedy in those cases will soon blow up in smoke. After all, indigenous people in Bangladesh have a long history of political, economic and social discrimination at the hands of the state and mainstream Bengali society.

The forgotten people

In 1971, when Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan, the political leadership was obsessed with Bengali nationalism that helped propel the independence movement and engender war. Thus, in the first constitution of 1972, the new nation accepted religious pluralism but denied ethnic and cultural diversity. The ethnic minorities were forgotten in the charter, despite the fact that many of them fought against the Pakistan army side by side with Bengalis and took the brunt of the violence.

Nearly half of these ethnic communities live in the plain lands in the north, south and coastal regions, while others live in three hill districts: Bandarban, Rangamati and Khagrachhari, otherwise known as the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Until the 1991 national census, they were completely disregarded.

Even in the most recent 2001 census, they were erroneously enumerated. The government calculated between 1.5 and 2 million people, belonging to 25 small ethnic groups, as part of Bangladesh's population of 160 million. 

Indigenous leaders claim the number of groups is 45. However, independent researchers estimate the figure to be as high as 90 groups contributing a much larger population of 3 million. 

A struggle for recognition

The unique ways of life, cultures, traditions and heritage of the ethnic groups are extremely valuable to Bangladesh's history and multi-cultural identity, but they face increasing threats against their survival and struggle for recognition.

Constitutionally unrecognized, they are driven toward the edges and made to feel destitute. Forced to abandon their ancestral homes, they long for the forests that have been cleared and their lands that have been grabbed by Bengali people. This has led to a dislocation from their land, culture and history and a forced migration to the towns and cities in search of work. Bengali society has imposed its lifestyle and identity on them.

In 2010, at the time a constitutional amendment to citizenship identity was proposed, indigenous leaders appealed to the government to recognize them as "indigenous peoples," only to be rejected. Instead, they were given the new identity of "small ethnic groups" in the Small Ethnic Groups Cultural Institutes Act of 2010 leaving their identity in obscurity.

Our constitution guarantees equal rights to all people irrespective of race, caste, creed and religion but does not recognize non-Bengali ethnic minorities as distinct cultural groups.

The charter recognizes Bangladesh as an ethnically and culturally homogeneous nation of Bengali people whose national language is Bangla or Bengali. It calls for "establishing a uniform, mass-oriented system of education" which undermines the struggle of ethnic groups for protection of their culture and language from hegemony of Bengali language and culture.

Bangladesh is a signatory of the International Labor Organization's Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Populations (No. 107), but it has not ratified the Convention of Biological Diversity (No. 169) that contains more-detailed protective measures for indigenous peoples.

This country is governed by a strong, anti-indigenous nexus of ruling elite, bureaucrats, political parties, ultra-nationalists and bigots. They continuously put barriers up against the recognition, development and empowerment of indigenous peoples.

"No indigenous peoples"

The United Nations declared 1994-2004 as the First International Decade for the World's Indigenous Peoples and 2005-2014 as the Second International Decade for World's Indigenous Peoples. Annually, Aug. 9 has been designated as the International Day for the World's Indigenous Peoples.

This international day has never been officially celebrated in Bangladesh and the government perpetually discourages private celebrations. Political leaders, ministers and government officials claim there are "no indigenous peoples" citing historic references that say there were "no such groups" in this land before the 17th century.

The statement is based on a misguided interpretation of the label of indigenous.

The United Nations defines indigenous peoples as those "practicing unique traditions, they retain social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live."

Yet, our ethnic minorities still struggle for official recognition. Moreover, Bengali society often taunts them with the term "tribal" that they deem derogatory.

Time and again, ethnic groups such as the Garos of the Modhupur forests, the Santals in the north and Khasis in the northeast have faced threats of eviction, torture and even death over land disputes. Hamstrung by their lifestyles, indigenous people live modestly, are illiterate and ignorant of state economic or political processes. Many of them have lived on ancestral lands for decades but don't possess documentation for land rights. This helps to explain why they are susceptible to fraud and forgery, and have progressively lost their lands.

A double minority

The Chittagong Hill Tracts make up the country's only mountainous region, which borders India and Myanmar and is home to some 25 ethnic groups. The majority are Buddhists but there some are Christians.

Outside the Chittagong Hill Tracts, indigenous peoples don't typically have political parties. Where they do, they are often engaged in in-fighting and rivalry, which prevents them from truly safe-guarding their communities.

Ultimately, the fringe communities are politically marginalized, insecure and under-represented, seriously limiting their access to socio-economic development.  

The indigenous peoples are mostly non-Muslims—Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and ancient religions — making them a double minority. Some ethnic groups such as Garo, Khasis, Santal and Tripura, are largely Christian. Four out of the country's eight Catholic dioceses are predominantly indigenous.

Often the Catholic Church stands beside the indigenous people to protect their lives, livelihood and culture. Thus, the church also faces the ire of the state machinery and opportunist Muslims. In 1967, Archbishop Lawrence Granner of Dhaka was forced to leave the country after he strongly criticized state-sponsored communal riots against indigenous peoples.

In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Islamic radicals sometimes accuse the church and church groups of acting as agents of foreign countries and fueling unrest to secede the region to create an independent country. Fearing backlash, the church works with indigenous people silently, sometimes compromising the interests of the people to save them from the threats of Bengali Muslims.

In general, indigenous peoples are poor, have little access to resources, are progressively losing their lands and properties, and continuously face social, political, cultural exploitation, discrimination and harassment. Constitutional and legal protections should be applied to help uplift them from their current struggle for survival. Support from aid agencies and civil society groups also play a vital role for their development and empowerment.

At a minimum, indigenous peoples deserve to be recognized as equal citizens to their fellow Bengali countrymen and given their entitlements to rights so they may prosper as equal human beings.

END

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Land grabbing drives lawlessness and deaths in Bangladesh

An indigenous Santal man in Dinajpur district (Photo: Rock Ronald Rozario)

In separate incidents last week, a tribal Santal man was murdered, and an Oraon woman was gang raped by Muslim men in northern Bangladesh. A local member of the ruling Awami League Party was charged and arrested for the rape.

In Rangpur district, 10 policemen guard Christ the Savior Catholic Church after an armed attack on priests and nuns, allegedly by a Muslim mob, on July 7.

Asaduzzaman Saja Fakir, a member of the opposition Jatiya Party, known for his anti-tribal and anti-Church activities, is thought to be behind the attack. For years, the Church has resisted Fakir’s attempts to illegally occupy a piece of land owned by a Church-run school.

On July 24, police in Naogaon district exhumed the body of Ovidio Marandy, a top government official and tribal Santal Catholic, for a post-mortem.

Marandy, 32, was a vocal opponent of land grabs. Prior to his death on January 11, he had clashed with Abul Kalam Azad, an Awami League parliamentarian from Govindaganj in Gaibandha district accused of grabbing some 40 hectares of land from local tribal people since the 1980s.

Before he was buried, Marandy’s family noted that neither his injuries nor the damage to his vehicle matched the “road accident” story. It took more than six months for them to secure a post-mortem.

Meanhwile, seven tribal Oraon Catholic men are languishing in jail after they were falsely charged with the murder of a Muslim man in Bolakipur area in Dinajpur district in June last year.

Azizur Prodhan and his cousin Mofazzal Prodhan, also a member of the Awami League, have been in dispute with tribals in the area over land that they say they purchased legally nearly 40 years ago, and allegedly instigated an attack on local tribal Catholic villagers.

The man whom they say was murdered died of a heart attack during the counter-attack. Franciscan Father Jerome Rozario, assistant pastor at Mariampur Catholic Church, claims the Prodhans bribed police and doctors to get a medical certificate claiming that it was murder.

Five different cases, but all have one common cause – battles over land. Police made arrests in each case, but justice is likely to be elusive.

The victims are Christian and non-Christian tribal people, from predominantly tribal areas. In at least four out of the five cases, the aggressors wield considerable political clout.

Denial of justice

Hunger for land is inevitable in Bangladesh, a nation of 160 million people crammed into just 147,570 square kilometers.

A population boom has fueled the hunger. This largely agricultural, Muslim-majority nation has lost vast areas of land due to the demands of housing, urbanization and industrialization.

“About three million civil and criminal court cases are rolling in Bangladesh judiciary, and 75 percent are related to land disputes,” said Shamsul Huda, executive director of the Association for Land Reform and Development, a Dhaka-based advocacy group.

In this low lying river delta country, the shifting of rivers, an outdated land record system, forgery and corruption are blamed for many of the land disputes. With the legal system still too expensive and with little government incentive, the poor and marginalized are often denied justice.

“Our legal system is discriminatory, anti-poor and anti-indigenous people,” Huda said. “It always favors the rich and powerful. They can go to police and bribe them and they can even influence the judiciary. But the poor can do nothing. In 99 percent of cases true justice is never done.”

Christians, the majority of them Catholics, make up less than half a percent of the population, and nearly half of them belong to ethnic tribal groups.

Most tribals migrated from various Indian states during British rule to work as agricultural and day workers. The British gave them land to live on and cultivate, mostly with verbal permission. This paperless allocation has contributed to many of the current conflicts with Muslims.

“In the past, there have been dozens of attacks from land grabbers on tribals, and at least 10 Christians have been killed. No case has seen justice yet,” said Nirmol Rozario, secretary of the Bangladesh Christian Association. “This culture of impunity encourages more attacks.”

Rabindranath Soren, president of the Jatiya Adivasi Parishad tribal rights group, says about 140 tribal people have been killed and more than a dozen tribal women raped for their land in the past four decades. It has forced some 10,000 tribal people to migrate to India.

“Tribal people face systematic violence for land, but the government and local administration are apathetic towards them,” Soren said. “Our constitutional right to live as equal citizens of the country is being violated but no one seems to bother.”

Rights activist Rosaline Costa from Hotline Human Rights Trust says that for the most part, political parties lose nothing by neglecting tribal people.

“It is easy to make them a scapegoat,” she said. “They are a double minority because they are poor and tribal. They don’t have power and money to fight land grabbers who are often backed by political parties.”

More than a century ago European missionairies purchased huge amounts of land for each parish they set up in Dinajpur and neighboring Rajshahi. This makes the Church a target of land grabbers as well.

Sonatan Das, a junior lawyer and secretary of the Land Commission in Dinajpur diocese, says there are currently 52 court cases regarding land disputes between the Church and Muslims in Dinajpur.

Initially, the local government and administration show sympathy to tribal people when they face violence, but the situation changes when attackers wield their political and financial influence.

Outdated land records and discriminatory legal system

In 1950, the government fixed the ceiling for individual land ownership at 13.48 hectares. In 1984, a Land Reform Act reduced the ceiling to 8.1 hectares in an effort to carry out agrarian reform and divide the country’s land more evenly.

But the country’s elites never followed the rule and never returned excess land to the state. Moreover, there has never been a ceiling system for urban areas.

“Rich people can own 20 apartments or 20 multi-storied complexes in a city like Dhaka, and there is no law to restrict them,” said Huda.

About 1.3 million hectares of government owned lands are currently held by influential elites, according to the Land Ministry.  

Bangladesh’s land records registration system is still paper-based and outdated; it makes corruption and forgery easy. Often, landowners find that their property has been sold to others without their knowledge and they are forced to go to court to get the land back.

Cases linger for years and families are often forced to spend huge sums to recover property. Often this requires selling other property, ultimately leaving them landless.

In 2000 the government passed a legal aid act to help poor people in legal cases, but beneficiaries are very few. “Less than five percent of people get this sort of legal aid,” said Huda. “In most cases, they often hesitate to go to court, fearing further troubles.”

While Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith recently said the land records system is being computerized and modernized, activists are skeptical about real progress.

“Updating the land records system won’t in itself change anything,” said Huda. “The whole system should be changed, including the law and trial system.

“The land law must be changed to make it eligible to favor rich and poor equally. There should be land tribunals in each district of the country and also in the Supreme Court. The land cases should be resolved quickly and no case should take more than two to three years,” said Huda.

“Once it is done, 75 percent of the court cases will be gone within 10 or 15 years. But this will require lots of effort from the government, and they must do it for good.”

END

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Bangladesh Church must speak out on long running anti-Christian campaign

The Catholic church in Bandarban, southeastern Chittagong Hill Tracts is at the center of an anti-Christian campaign (Photo: Chittagong Catholic Diocese website)

Silence is often prudent but at other times it’s plain foolish, as is the case with the Catholic Church and Christians in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), where their deathly silence in response to a long-running anti-Christian campaign is working against them.

In March and April, local newspapers and online media ran a cooked-up story against priests and religious brothers from the Queen of Fatima Catholic Church in Bandarban, the largest and one of the oldest Catholic churches in the CHT.

The report alleged that the priests and religious were sexually abusing tribal girls residing in a Church-run hostel.

To escape the abuses, some 71 girls fled the hostel one night, prompting Church leaders to pay off local officials to cover everything up, it claimed.

The girls actually fled in protest against the woman in charge of the hostel, a tribal woman who the girls say treated them badly. They absconded after several pleas to have the woman replaced fell on deaf ears. The girls later returned after the woman was dismissed.

The concocted abuse story came from local journalists looking to extort money from Church officials and was encouraged by local Muslim leaders who have a history of anti-Christian sentiment.

This is not an isolated case, but part of a game that’s been played against the Church and Christians for nearly a decade. During this time, several Islamist and mainstream newspapers have run fabricated reports accusing Christian missioners of converting thousands of tribals with the lure of money and plotting to turn the CHT into an independent Christian country like Timor-Leste.

The reports also alleged that several Western countries were funding Christian NGO activities to change the religious demography of the CHT to fulfill this agenda.

Church leaders and development activists have told me privately that government intelligence agents have paid them visits asking them how many Christians were in the area and how Christian NGOs were being funded.

Last year, the Hefazat-e-Islam militant group staged two rallies in Dhaka to make 13 demands. Most Christians failed to notice that one of them was a crackdown on “unlawful activities by Christian missioners and NGOs in the CHT”.

Throughout this time, Church leaders have remained silent. They have neither spoken to the authorities nor refuted the baseless claims in the mainstream press. They also didn’t opt for official complaints and protests, not even with regard to the Hefazat-e-Islam rallies.

The CHT, which borders India and Myanmar, is the only mountainous region of Bangladesh. This strategically important area is home to more than 12 indigenous tribes, mostly Buddhist, who have lived there for centuries and been socially and economically neglected for decades.

These peace loving people have seen the systematic destruction of their culture and livelihood since the 1970s when the government started changing the local demography by resettling landless Bengali Muslims who started grabbing tribal lands. The result has been ongoing sectarian conflict in these hills.

Tribals resisted the influx and, with latent support from India, formed a militia group to fight the settlers.

In response, the government turned the area into a military zone. For more than two decades, a bloody bush war between the army and militants claimed hundreds of lives until it ended with the CHT Peace Accord in 1997, which is still to be implemented. To this day, the region is heavily militarized with some 500 army camps.

Christian missioners arrived in the 1950s, and today Christians account for less than three percent of the region’s 1.6 million people.

The Muslim population, however, has increased from less than three percent in 1947 to more than 48 percent today. Tribals are still larger in number, but they are marginal in city centers and most businesses are controlled by Bengalis.

With such a small Christian presence, claims that missioners and NGO’s are trying to create another Timor-Leste are nothing more than ill intentioned fairy tales and simply not possible .

Yet, the rumors are rife and are being fed by local Bengali Muslim groups, who are aggressively anti-tribal.

They are the force behind the occupation of tribal lands by Muslim settlers. They are also backed by civil and military officials, and Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hefazat. All are trying to discredit the Church to divert national and international attention away from the grim political and rights situation for tribals in the CHT.

The war is over, but sectarian clashes between tribals and Muslims and rival tribal groups are still common.

According to a local rights group, Muslims killed 11 tribal men, raped 15 tribal women and burned down more than 100 tribal homes last year. Rights activists also accuse the government and army of keeping unrest alive to legitimize the militarization of the area.

International rights groups including Amnesty International have reported gross human rights violations by Muslim settlers and soldiers on tribal people. These include murder, torture, arson and rape.

Environmental groups allege the region is facing an environmental disaster because of deforestation and tobacco cultivation by the settlers.

Foreigners are generally not allowed in the CHT; but if they are it is usually under close surveillance. It is not because armed tribal groups might kidnap them for ransom, but mostly to stop them seeing what really goes on there.

Like in other parts of the country, Catholics and Protestants have set up dozens of schools, vocational centers, health clinics, and conducted development activities in the CHT to help tribals, non-tribals, Christians and non-Christians alike.

In most other places, Christians are held in high esteem by Muslims for their contributions in the education, health and development sectors, but in the CHT they are being vilified.

One reason is the activities of Christian missioners who have made tribal people more aware of their rights and more vocal.

The Bandarban Church incident is the most recent example of this vilification and could have been a lot worse if local Muslims had believed the stories that were told.

A 1998 mob attack by Muslims on several churches and Christian institutions in the Luxmibazar district of Dhaka during a land dispute between a Catholic school and a local mosque should serve as a gentle reminder as to how vulnerable Christians are.

Church leaders should realize that Christian haters consider their silence as weakness. They should learn from the recent attempt to stoke anti-Christian feelings in the CHT and act strongly and accordingly.

If they don’t take this seriously, they can be assured that the worst is yet to come.

END 

Read original opinion piece here Bangladesh Church must speak out on long running anti-Christian campaign