State forces don’t want peace in Chittagong Hill Tracts: Michael Chakma

Sanjoy Kumar Barua

I didn’t see the sun for five years and four months. They picked me up with blindfolded and thrown me in a dark room which you can imagine as inside a grave. Such inhumanity cannot be expressed in words. A terrible life to seeing death very closely does not come in anyone’s life.

When recollecting the horrible moments in the secret detention centre “Aynaghor” in Dhaka, Michael Chakma also shared that the DGFI official threatened him and said, “You can’t stand against the government’s decision. No anti-state work can be done. The government runs the state.”

They give rotten food and most of the time it was very spicy, he said.

A group of six members who were plain cloth picked me up from Dhaka’s Kalyanpur area on April 2019, the United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF) leader Michael said.

I became very sick there once for salt deficiency. The room was very dark where sunlight could not reach, he said.

“They blindfolded and took me another room in the name of interrogation every time. They changed my room for three times where I spent five years and four months horrible life. It seems always that death is very close to me”, Michael shared.

“When they took me one place to another they tied my eyes tightly, covered the head with a big hat and handcuffed.”

“The supervisors there all wore big masks. When you see these masks, you will be afraid. Their purpose is to keep you terrified”, he said.

“Why you killed Shaktiman Chakma? They often asked this question but I replied them I didn’t kill him”, said Michael.

“You also want peace and unity in CHT? We don’t want peace there. The DGFI official threaten always saying this”, he added.

“The state forces don’t want peace in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) rather their policy is divide and rule in hill”, he said.

Advocate Shaktiman Chakma, 55, also a leader of ParbatyaChattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (MN Larma faction), was shot dead by unidentified miscreants in front of the upazila parishad complex on May 03 2018.

Shaktiman was a vice president of PCJSS-MN Larma, a group which was formed an alliance with the UPDF (Democratic).

Following the killing of Shaktiman, his fellow activists said it was an act of the UPDF, an allegation the party has rejected.

PCJSS founder Manabendra Narayan Larma, popularly known as MN Larma and a leading proponent of the Jumma people’s rights, was killed in an attack by a splinter group of his organisation on November 10, 1983.

On December 2, 1997, under the leadership of MN Larma’s younger brother Santu Larma, PCJSS signed the CHT Peace Accord that a large group of students of the hill districts refused to accept, leading to the formation of UPDF.

Conflicts continued between PCJSS and UPDF until the beginning of 2015, when a resolution was finally reached following the “secret meeting”. By this time, hundreds of activists had already been killed.

Besides, during the last caretaker rule, PCJSS split and PCJSS-MN Larma established control over Khagrachhari district and three to four upazilas of Rangamati. Enmity ensued between the two factions.

On November 15, 2017, the UPDF (Democratic) was formed under the leadership of Tapan Jyoti.

Michael is an Indigenous rights activist who had been staunchly vocal against abuses committed by the military in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and has campaigned for an end to military rule in the region. 

The previous government repeatedly ignored desperate appeals from his family, as well as inquiries from the Supreme Court, the UN Committee against Torture and INGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

In January 2020, the police finally stated they “could not find anybody named Michael Chakma in any prisons in Bangladesh.”

Since the formation of Bangladesh as a nation in 1971, the indigenous communities of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in southwestern Bangladesh have suffered from a policy of assimilation at the hands of the national government.

Armed conflict raged in the late 1970s and 1980s until the peace accord was signed between the indigenous political party and the government of Bangladesh almost 27 years ago in 1997. Indigenous peoples of the CHT claim that fundamental issues such as indigenous identity, land rights and demilitarisation are yet to be resolved as the government has failed to fully implement the Accord.

I would like to call upon all the regional parties of the hills to stop violence and restore peace in CHT, Michael urges.