They eat wild spinach to survive

Sanjoy Kumar Barua

“The fire set by the rubber company in January left us destitute. Rice was stored in our house for several months. Everything was burnt to ashes. We couldn’t save anything from the fire. For the last four days we have been eating only wild spinach to survive.”

Nong Pao Mro was saying the words in a tearful voice.

“There is no food in the house. I could not give my children anything except boiled wild spinach for the last four days. My heart breaks when I look at the children’s faces,” said mother Nong  Pao.

Not only Nong Pao, but about 16 Mro families in the remote Rengyan Mro neighborhood of Lama Upazila of Bandarban are in dire need of food, said Rengyan Mro, Karbari (village chief) of Rengyan Para.

“After the company burnt to ashes our houses, we got some relief from some individuals and institutions. There is no food in our house for many days. There is no edible spinach around the neighborhood. One has to walk for about half an hour to collect the spinach for food from the forest”, said another villager Mensai Mro.

A person named Rengyun Mro said, “The people of the company have occupied our ancestral jhum land. If we cannot cultivate jhum this year, we will die of starvation with our family. We are living inhuman life here.”

“There is no food in the house. We are trying to survive by eating wild leaves. I have forgotten when I gave my children to eat meat,” he said.

“People from the Lama Rubber Company earlier cut down my banana plantation. They burnt our houses on January to evict us. We couldn’t even completely rebuild the burnt houses. The government didn’t come forward to protect us despite rubber company repeatedly torturing us”, he said.

“Everyone in the neighborhood is always in a state of panic after the company set our houses on fire. After the fire incident, the district administration, human rights commission and many other government departments gave us hope to return our Jhum land, but they have not yet taken any action against the Lama Rubber Company,” said Karbari Rengyan Mro.

On April 27 last year, the Jhum gardens of Langkom Mro Para, Joy Chandra Karbari Para and Rengyan Karbari Para of Lama Upazila of Bandarban were burnt. About one hundred acres of jhum paddy, bamboo, mango, banana, pineapple and various fruits and forest trees were burnt in this fire. The people of Lama Rubber Industries Limited Company set fire to the Jhum gardens in a planned manner to grab our ancestral Jhum land, said Langkom Mro, Karbari of Langkom Mro Para.

Later, a 5-member committee headed by the deputy director of the local government was formed by the Bandarban Hill District Council to uncover the real facts in this regard. The committee gave 6 recommendations including cancellation of the lease, but it was not implemented. Instead, on September 6, the only source of water of our neighborhood was poisoned by the rubber company, he said.

Md Kamal Uddin of Lama Rubber Industries denied the allegation and said, “Mro and Tripura people grabbed our land which we got as lease for rubber plantation.”