Will we never get justice?

Sanjoy Kumar Barua

For ages, we have been surviving here by cultivating Jhum in our ancestral land. If the Rubber Company takes our jhum land, how can we survive in the hills?

79-year-old Piyapaw Mro of Reng Yen Karbari Para of Bandarban’s Lama Upazila lamented and said, “Please don’t take away our Jhum land by force. If we can’t garden Jhum, we will starve to death.  Head of the government please save us.”

“Aren’t we citizens of Bangladesh? Will we never get justice? Why are the people of the Rubber Company torturing us so much?” she lamented.

“We are seriously struggling with other family members and spending our days with food shortage”, she added.

“Whom will we seek justice from? Public representatives, administration, and police are all company people. Earlier the people of the company poisoned the Jhiri (natural water body) of our Para. They cut my hard planted banana garden”, cried one Rengyung Mro of Reng Yen Para.

“We don’t even go to the nearby market alone following fear and threat from company people. First they burnt our Jhum land, poisoned our drinking water source, filed false cases against us, destroyed our banana orchard, and recently the company people again cut down our various fruit trees in the name of cleaning the land”, said Reng Yen Mro, Karbari of Reng Yen Para.

“We don’t know how we will survive here,” said Karbari adding, “There are 11 Mro families living in Reng Yen Para.”

“The villagers of the para are spending their days in fear. Company people are giving false cases one after another. Our cries do not reach to the ears of the government”, Karbari lamented.

Langkom Mro, Karbari of Langkom Para, said, “We protested against the grabbing of our Jhum land, made human chains, and gave  memorandum to the high level of the government. But nobody took any action against the Rubber Company which grabbed our ancestral land. On the contrary, false and fabricated cases were filed against us.”

“This country is not ours? Why will our land be taken away?”, said Langkom.

On March, the residents of Langkom Mro Karbari Para, Joychandra Tripura Para, and Reng Yen Karbari Para held a human chain and protest rally in front of the Bandarban district administration office, seeking the Prime Minister’s intervention in the hope of returning the 400 acres of Jhum land which Lama Rubber Industries Limited grabbed, said Inchong Mro, a resident of Langkom Para.

“Lama Rubber Industries Limited claims to have leased 1600 acres of land in their name but in reality they occupied much more than that. Among the 64 shareholders of Lama Rubber Industries Limited, several were former senior administrative officials, including the Deputy Commissioner of Bandarban”, said Dipayon Khisa, Information and Publicity Secretary of Bangladesh Indigenous People’s Forum.

“The bureaucrats who are supposed to protect the victims belong to the same tribe of the lease holders. And that’s why they have made law enforcement ineffective,” Dipayon said.

“According to the investigation report of the Bandarban Hill District Council (BHDC), the lease will automatically be canceled if the specified garden is not created within ten years of the lease or if any condition of the lease contract is failed to be fulfilled”, he said.

“There are no rubber plantations on the 400 acres of Jhum land. If the Rubber Company got the land for lease over 25 years ago, where is their garden? “, said Dipayon.

“The people of these three Paras are facing threat of eviction due to the oppression of the Lama Rubber Industries Limited,” he added.

“We sent our investigation report to the Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs Ministry but didn’t get any direction yet from the Ministry”, said A T M Kawsar Hossain, chief executive officer of BHDC.

Contacted, Mosammat Hamida Begum, Secretary to the CHT Affairs Ministry said “I can’t comment on the investigation report of BHDC without seeing the file. Tomorrow I will see the report. ”  

After the incident of burning Jhum land on April 26, a five-member investigation committee headed by Lutfur Rahman, deputy director of the local government of Bandarban district administration, was formed in May.

When contacted, Lutfar Rahman said, “We didn’t find any such condition in our investigation that if a lease holder fails to make rubber garden in his leased land within any certain period of time, the lease will automatically be cancelled.”

However, one of the conditions of the lease agreement — as noted in another investigation report by the kanungo (revenue clerk) of the Lama upazila land office in October 2017 — is that the leaseholder must complete the project work within five years of getting the allotment.

Officer-in-charge of Lama police station Md Shahidul Islam Chowdhury, said “We are maintaining peace and order in the disputed land area following a direction from district administration.”

Earlier, Kamal Uddin, project director of Lama Rubber Industries, said they didn’t grab any Jhum land and the allegations against them were false.

46 thousand 952 acres of land in 1 thousand 871 plots have been leased for 1 thousand 407 rubber plantations and 464 horticulture in Bandarban. Out of this, 1,600 acres of land has been given to a company called Lama Rubber Industries Limited in Bandarban. The people of Mro and Tripura used to cultivate jhum farming in these lands for generations, said the speakers in a meeting in Dhaka on September 21.