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ANNEXE: HISTORY OF THE CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS

The Chittagong Hill Tracts in the South-eastern corner of Bangladesh bordering North East India is the homeland of 12 indigenous communities, numbering about 600,000 people, covering 5093 square miles (10% of the country) and rising as high as 3,000 feet in places. The hill ranges contain limited cultivable land, most of it of low quality in contrast to the very fertile multi-crop-able alluvial plains of Bangladesh. The tribal people practice a mixed farming of plough cultivation in the fertile valleys and swidden agriculture on the hill slopes, known as jhum cultivation.

The British annexed this area in 1860, and in 1900 passed a regulation which kept the area apart form the plains by limiting migration and separating the administration. In 1947 the CHT became a part of Muslim dominant East Pakistan, even though the people of CHT had opted to become a part of India. This resulted in the first migration of a small number of tribal people into India who were concerned about their rights as non-Muslim indigenous people in East Pakistan.

Between 1957-1963, the Kaptai Hydroelectric Dam was built (USAID project) which flooded 54,000 acres of ploughable land, taking away 40% of cultivable land available for cultivation from the tribal farmers. 100,000 tribal people were effected, most without any compensation and thousands of people fled to India. 40,000 displaced people were moved to Arunachal Pradesh by the Indian Government. 60,000 people are now living in Arunachal Pradesh, still stateless, even though many of them have been born in India.

After the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, the tribal people hoped for political recognition and some form of autonomy within the state of Bangladesh. However this was denied to them.

Between 1974 and 1984 a government transmigration policy brought 400,000 settlers from the plain lands into the CHT, an area that already had a scarcity of land following the construction of the Kaptai dam. Alongside the transmigration policy a huge militarization of the area took place.

In 1986 a tribal resistance group made a major attack on the settlers. The settlers and the army retaliated with horrific counter attacks. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s innumerable disturbing accounts of killings, torture, rape, arson, forced relocation, cultural and religious oppression of the tribal people were reported against the Bengali settlers and the Bangladesh army. Over 55,000 hill people fled into the North-east Indian state of Tripura.

In 1997 a truce was called between some of the tribal groups and the Bangladesh army and the CHT Peace Accord was signed between the Bangladesh Government and the tribal political party. Many refugees returned to Bangladesh from Tripura with promise of being fully rehabilitated onto their original land. However very few of the conditions that were set down in the Peace Accord have been kept. Very few refugee families were able to move back onto their land as it was inhabited by settlers from the plain lands. The situation in the CHT remains unstable and uncertain. This situation is additionally aggravated by the continuation of the transmigration policy of settlers into the CHT.

SKS School was established by human rights activists and education workers in response to this refugee situation in Northeast India, as a means of providing a positive future for displaced tribal children and young people from Bangladesh and the Northeast.

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