Jummas of CHTs: Caught Between Accord and Discord

Violent clashes erupted between ethnic Jumma (largely Buddhists) minorities and Bengali settlers in the Khagrachhari and Rangamati districts in Chittagong Hill between 19-23 February, resulting in at least four deaths. Hundreds have reportedly been injured or displaced. Reports claim that thousands of indigenous people were made homeless after arsonists supported by Bangladeshi soldiers burned down nearly 600 Jamma buildings, including residential houses, temples, churches and schools, during the violence. However, the Bangladeshi government has denied any involvement, direct or indirect, in the recent violence.

Now that a tenuous peace has returned to Bangladesh’s tribal Chittagong Hill Tracts region following clashes between tribes and settlers in violence that some say was encouraged by the military, all eyes are now on how Dhaka will respond. I published a report on this issue titled “Bangladesh Under Fire over Tribal Violence” at ISN Security Watch, Zurich, with views from couple of expert observers of the situation.

For a brief background, read ASI Blog report, “Ethnic Violence Grips Bangladesh”, February 24, 2010.

Here is the transcript of my interview with Sophie Grig, senior campaigner with Survival International. The London-based Survival International advocates for tribal rights worldwide and has been long monitoring the CHT situation. Your (ASI Blog readers) Comments are very welcome.

Q1- Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh have witnessed violence recently. How do you describe this episodic ethnic violence that surfaced in the area between Bengali settlers and Jumma Hill people?

Sadly, the recent violence comes as no surprise to those who are following the situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Tension had been building up in the Sajek region for some time, with settlers, supported by the soldiers, taking land from the Jumma tribal people. The history of conflict between the two groups means that any incident can spark great tensions which can rapidly get out of hand. As happened here, once the violence was triggered, settlers have taken the opportunity to burn down the houses of innocent Jumma villagers. Because the army supports and encourages the settlers, they are able to act without restraint. Soldiers have been involved in gross human rights violations in the CHT, with impunity, for many years. It is essential that those responsible for the shooting of Jumma people are brought to justice and a full impartial investigation should take place into the whole incident. Until the Jummas have their land rights fully recognized and the CHT is demilitarized (including the removal of all the temporary military camps, as agreed in the Peace Accord), the Jumma people will not be able to feel safe on their own land.

Q2- CHTs Peace Accord is 12 years old and yet to be implemented in real terms. Is there a lack of political will or vested interest playing a larger game here? 

I think for many years there was a absence of much needed ‘political will’ to implement the peace accord. Couple of years back, there have been many positive signs but nothing although it is not happening fast enough. I also believe that there are vested interests in the CHT, within the army and the settler communities, who do not want the accord to be implemented and who do not want the military to lose their control in the region. Survival is calling on the government to fully implement the CHT peace accord and to ensure that all those responsible for attacks against the Jumma people are brought to justice.

Q3- Do you think that there will be reemergence armed groups in CHTs to protect minority rights, especially in the face of alleged military repressions?

I hope that this won’t be the case, and that this recent violence will have helped those within the Jumma community, who are divided about how best to push for peace in their region, to unite and work together for the rights of all Jummas.

Q4- Any recommendations for the Dhaka authority?

It is important for the Jummas to regain trust in the Government after these brutal attacks. Therefore, it is essential that there should be a full, independent investigation into the recent events and the role army played there. Those responsible for this atrocity must be brought to justice. While the army, and settlers, are seen to be able to kill and destroy with such impunity, the Jummas will never be safe on their own land. We call on the Bangladesh government to put an end to army violence in the CHT, withdraw the army camps, and fully implement the Peace Accord.

Posted by Animesh Roul on March 11, 2010. Respond »

Ethnic Violence Grips Bangladesh

On February 23, Dhaka authority deployed troops in the south-eastern Khagrachhari district (Chittagong Hill Tracts) after clashes between ethnic tribal people and Bengali settlers left at least 15 people injured and several houses torched. Earlier, similar violence took place in Rangamati district on February 19-20.

The Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) stated that at least eight Chakmas (one of the indigenous tribes of CHTs) were shot dead by the Bangladesh army personnel while dozens were injured on Feb 19-20. However the government has denied the reports so far.

Mr Suhas Chakma, Director of Asian Centre for Human Rights issued a statement to media (the author of this blog also received the statement) saying,

It is established beyond any reasonable doubt that the Bangladesh army is denying access to the sites to prevent the truth from coming out. The arrest of six Chakmas who got admitted at Baghachari army camp with bullet injuries sustained in the firing of the Bangladesh Army for alleged rioting is a direct attempt to discourage the indigenous peoples from approaching the authorities and therefore, keep the massacre under the carpet.

It is quite evident that the non-implementation of the 1997 Accord and continuing appropriation of the lands of tribal peoples are the root causes of this ongoing violence. The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs) region in Bangladesh was plagued by decade long insurgency in the 1980s. In 1997 a peace accord inked between the government and the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS), a political platform of the tribal people, now known as the United Peoples Democratic Front, brought some sort of respite to the indigenous tribal people.

Fear looms large on the horizon that Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh, home to at least 12 ethnic minority groups, is bracing for another round of severe and prolong ethnic conflict. The fear is not restricted to only violence between tribal hill people, predominantly Buddhist and Bengali migrant settlers in Chittagong Hill, but the imminent return of armed vigilante movements (remember the Shanti Bahini’s armed movement) which might resurface to safeguard tribal rights and identity of the region or to secure the Jumma nation (homeland for the tribal hill people) all over again.

Meanwhile, the ACHR accused the Bangladesh government of only arresting people from the tribal communities from in and around Khagrachhari district. ACHR also calls for a judicial inquiry to be completed within 90 days into the killings and destruction of properties till now, and fully implement the CHTs Accord of 1997 within specific time frame.

Posted by Animesh Roul on February 24, 2010. Respond »

Thailand and Cambodia: Time for ASEAN to Act

It doesn’t take long for a visitor to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to hear about the country’s problems with Thailand.  Almost anyone you speak to has a view, mainly centered on Thailand’s alleged provocative actions over a disputed boundary that intersects a 12th century Buddhist temple.

The dispute was formally resolved more than forty years ago when the International Court of Justice awarded sovereignty of the Preah Vihear temple to Cambodia. The dispute erupted again two years ago when Cambodia applied to UNESCO to have the temple declared a world heritage site. Thailand initially supported the bid.  But opposition politicians in Bangkok’s highly polarized political climate protested that the temple’s world heritage status would mean encroaching on Thai territory, forcing the Thai government to withdraw support for Cambodia’s UNESCO bid.  This led in 2008 to an escalation of military tensions along the border and the outbreak of some fighting, quickly quelled by local commanders.

What has happened since is an example of how bilateral disputes can easily escalate into conflict and a wake-up call for ASEAN in terms of the need for a more formal conflict management mechanism.  Another armed clash between Thai and Cambodian forces along the border in the third week of January underscored the fragile security situation in the area.

As is commonly the case in the region, both countries agreed at first to keep the dispute strictly a bilateral affair. Boundary disputes between Indonesia and Malaysia and Singapore and Malaysia have followed the same route – although in the case of the Sipadan and Ligitan dispute in Borneo waters between Indonesia and Malaysia and the more recent Pedra Branca island dispute between Singapore and Malaysia, the parties sought international arbitration.

In the case of Preah Vihear, international arbitration has already settled the question of sovereignty, and the issue was only resurrected on the Thai side as part of a bitter political quarrel between forces for and against ousted Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra. In the process, whatever goodwill there was between Thailand and Cambodia, which have a long history of mutual dislike and suspicion, evaporated towards the end of 2009 after Cambodia accused Thailand of betraying a promise and raising the Preah Vihear issue in multilateral fora.

Thailand, for its part, felt stabbed in the back after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen appointed the fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra as one of his economic advisors, which led to an escalated level of diplomatic tension and the recalling of each country’s ambassador. A deep sense of recrimination and bitterness now prevails; Cambodia has accused Thailand of espionage amid leaked Thai official documents that talk of preparations for war. Thailand accuses Cambodia of harbouring fugitives from Thai law and acting as a sanctuary for those who plot violent demonstrations aimed at bringing down the government.

Thaksin has in fact made frequent visits to Phnom Penh, where he has met with supporters unhindered. Now, some officials in the Cambodian capital provocatively say that only a general election in Thailand will help restore relations. Meanwhile, both sides of the border have been reinforced with heavily armed troops. Cambodia has acquired new equipment, including ground to air missiles, built new roads, sowed fresh mine fields and deployed thousands of troops in newly built villages.

None of this sits very well with the image of ASEAN as an effective bulwark against intra-regional conflict. Here are two neighbouring countries that have taken their animosity to levels of political and military brinkmanship never seen in the region.

The question is whether ASEAN can and should intervene, and then how?  The first obstacle to doing so is that ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan is himself a Thai, and Cambodian officials openly express their suspicion of his role advising the Thai government on the matter of Preah Vihear and the subsequent fallout.  Surin himself strongly denies any role in influencing or shaping current Thai foreign policy.  But even with Surin’s natural reluctance to get involved, no one else has come forward to assume a quiet diplomatic role in defusing tensions, which is a pity.

This seems all the more astonishing since the dispute has had a somewhat disrupting impact on high-level ASEAN meetings in the past few months, with Cambodia accusing Thailand as the ASEAN Chair of not properly following diplomatic protocol at summit meetings.  Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono did meet separately with the Thai and Cambodian Prime Ministers on the fringes of the APEC meeting in Singapore last November, but this rather public attempt at mediation appears to have had no effect on levels of acrimony in the two capitals.

A more effective approach would be for a credible neutral envoy, given a mandate by ASEAN Foreign Ministers, to embark on some quiet diplomacy. This might involve shuttling between meetings in Bangkok and Phnom Penh aimed at finding areas where confidence and trust building can begin the long process of repairing relations.

In this respect, it would be beneficial if Cambodia stopped commenting on internal Thai political affairs, and Thailand in turn stopped raising the Preah Vihear issue in international fora. Neither of these measures would result in a loss of dignity for either party, and would set the stage for a resumption of bilateral dialogue through designated official channels.

Reader comment by Catherin Dalpino:

When disputes and conflict arise between two Southeast Asian countries, Western analysts are quick to call for ASEAN mediation, and to criticize ASEAN for its lack of mechanisms and political will to resolve or prevent disputes.  It would be useful for the advocates of this position to delve more deeply into the history and nature of ASEAN in the process.  Was ASEAN ever intended to serve as a regional conflict resolution mechanism?  If so, what would it take to get ASEAN into gear on the current Thai-Cambodian conflict?

Some related comments and issues:

1.  The author’s chronology suggests that the conflict was ignited when Thai opposition figures (which would have been the People’s Alliance for Democracy) fanned nationalist sentiment to hobble the then Thai government (under the People’s Power Party, the second-generation clone of Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party).  What he does not mention is that Cambodia was in the midst of a national election at the time, and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s share in the polls clearly got a boost from the conflict.  There are, of course, two accounts of which side started the bullets flying, but the author only seems interested in Cambodia’s perspective.

2.  The author paints the conflict as the most severe the region has ever seen, and certainly the most serious that Thailand and Cambodia have ever experienced. That might be correct if history began in 1991.  If that is extended back to the second half of the 20th century, the level of conflict is relatively low.  In fact, few analysts paint the current conflict as having the potential to erupt into a serious and sustained confrontation.

3.  If ASEAN were to mediate the dispute, the current chair would need to back that effort if not actually lead it.  What would Hanoi’s position be?  Would Vietnam be constrained by its own (complicated) relationship with Cambodia in favoring an ASEAN intervention?

4.  The author suggests that a “neutral” individual should serve as mediator between Bangkok and Phnom Penh.  Should that be a serving ASEAN leader or someone more removed from the arena?  Who might that be?

Michael Vatikiotis responds:

1. Whilst there is no doubt that Prime Minsiter Hun Sen has exploited the dispute with Thailand for domestic political ends, few observers in Thailand doubt that the re-eruption of a long standing boundary issue was principally, and rather recklessly, stoked by opposing political factions in Thailand. 

2. There is no comment in the piece that suggests this is the most severe conflict the region has ever seen - and certainly not as serious as Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978.  But measured in terms of bilateral tension and the potential for conflict, one would need to agree that a severing of diplomatic relations leading to a troop build up on either side of the border is as serious as anything in recent years. In terms of the potential to erupt into serious armed confrontation, I think the risk is relatively slim for now. But the potential for nationalist sentiment on either side to become inflamed and take things to another level exists. 

3. ASEAN operates on the principle of consensus, and any support for a mediation effort would have to secure the agreement of all members.  The ASEAN Chair is important in taking the lead, but as we have seen in recent years on the issue of Burma, other leading member states such as Indonesia and Singapore have goaded the chair into action. 

4. The best candidate would be a senior official or recently retired official from a neutral and important ASEAN member state, preferably with good knowledge or connections in both Thailand and Cambodia. This would most probably mean someone from either Indonesia or the Philippines.  The key is that the diplomacy needs to be quiet so that neither side is embarrassed or loses face.

Posted by Michael Vatikiotis on January 25, 2010. Respond »

In the News: “Dialogue Key to Ending Leftist Violence in Asia”

In the Bangkok Post, Michael Vatikiotis writes that a “new threat is emerging in Asia.”

...[T]he newest non-state armed groups battling governments in the name of justice and freedom draw on what was once thought to be a dead ideology: Marxism.”

Citing examples from India, to Nepal, parts of Burma, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Thailand, Vatikiotis concludes:

... In the experience of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, which has convened dialogue with parties in armed conflict across Asia and Africa for the past decade, resolving any conflict necessitates the initiation of dialogue, almost always in conditions which initially will not be conducive or promising.

More broadly, governments need to recognise that armed violence against the state won’t disappear when Osama bin Laden is one day captured and al-Qaeda defeated.

For millions of disenfranchised people across Asia, whether they are facing ethnic or economic marginalisation, it would appear that Marxist ideas of popular struggle still have enormous appeal.

It would be a shame indeed, if all the effort expended on defeating terrorism this past decade is not related back to the basic root of the problem, which is that when people run out of peaceful ways to see their grievances redressed, they will take up arms.

Rather than becoming obsessed with cultural and religious divides - and in the process reinforcing them - the best way to deal with the problem is to engage in a dialogue to bring about an end to violence, whatever the root cause or driving ideology.”

Read the entire op-ed here.

Posted by Matthew Shannon Stumpf on December 14, 2009. Respond »

New Delhi Notes: Where you stand = what you see

In the last few days during my meetings with people in Delhi, several people have expressed an interest in knowing what I would say or write on matters related to Pakistan. Only one person actually was interested in talking about Sri Lanka. It’s almost the opposite in Chennai, although Pakistan does hold an enduring fascination everywhere.

India is the only one of South Asia’s states that shares borders, and therefore, communities, languages and culture, with every one of the others. Even the atoll-state of Maldives has something in common with one part of India—Minicoy. Along this long, multicultural frontier, perspective shifts to reflect neighbourly concerns and ethnic kinships. Thus, from the point of view of West Bengal, the view of South Asia begins with Bangladesh. For Punjab, it begins with West Punjab and Pakistan. For Tamil Nadu, it begins with Sri Lanka. A more careful reading would show moreover that within a region, say the Indian east, primary preoccupations vary too. If for someone from Assam, it is immigration from Bangladesh, for a policy-maker in Tripura it could be the easy passage across the porous frontiers of the region of militants and arms.

Similarly, for people on the other side of these frontiers, India begins with their neighbouring/ co-ethnic region and is largely imagined as an extension thereof. For Sri Lankans, therefore, India begins with the state of Tamil Nadu and the ‘60 million’ Tamils that they see as an extension of the Sri Lankan Tamil community. The rest of India is an add-on for many imaginations.

Happily and unhappily, these perspectives are now becoming complex. The advent of the Internet and satellite television carries programming in the region’s languages far from their area of origin. Thus, Chennaiites can now hear Nepali news! People are chatting, commenting on each other’s blogs, networking and tweeting across borders. Travel across the world is providing an opportunity for South Asians to meet and adding nuance to their understanding of each other’s states. This is the ‘happy’ part.

Terrorist attacks are the unhappy part. Because terror groups do not see their issues as local, they strike far from their area of contestation. There is no more striking example than the repeated attacks on Mumbai, especially 26/11. Mumbaikars now think about Pakistan.

Would that such a broadening of perspective were not due to insecurity and would that it were accompanied by a deepening! I have also had two or three conversations here about the fact that given India’s location and natural interest in its neighbourhood, we do not have the multi-disciplinary programmes or conferences that are seen elsewhere on South Asia. Where a single department might have a political scientist, an agricultural economist and an ethnomusicologist, giving students the opportunity to learn broadly. Where simultaneous panels in a conference might discuss poverty, law, textile and text. There are of course, South Asia programmes in India, but security, strategic studies and politics dominate the agenda, even though we know from historical experience across the world that it is broad-based knowledge that is most useful even in these areas. A depletion of area expertise made US intelligence-gathering on South, Central and West Asia very difficult in very recent memory, for instance.

Indian debates about educational reform, non-governmental and state initiatives and big funding should take a little time to support the creation of such spaces and platforms for research and teaching that will nurture this broad and deep learning about this complex, interconnected neighbourhood. In their absence, in the long run, we will continue to see policy underpinned by shallow understanding from perspectives skewed by narrow expertise. And globalization will carry the consequences of bad policy across continental frontiers.

Posted by Swarna Rajagopalan on October 11, 2009. Respond »