At least four were killed and six villages of ethnic minority people were burnt on Sunday in violence centring on land disputes in Khagrachari.
Sources in the area said that the violence had spread to Ramgarh and Manikchari in the district.
The administration banned gathering, rallies and carrying firearms by ordering Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for 24 hours at the places beginning 8:00pm Sunday as the violence was spreading.
Violence erupted when Bengali settlers began clearing the forest on 50 acres of disputed hillock, which belongs to the Marmas, near Shankhola Para at Hafchari union of Ramgarh in the afternoon.
Witnesses said that a group of Bengali settlers had gone to the hillock and begun planting banana saplings after clearing the forest about midday. Ethnic minority people then lodged protests but the Bengali settlers had not heeded them.
Ethnic minority people at one point attacked the Bengali labourers when they were sitting idle after lunch.
The injured labourer Ayub Ali died on his way to Manikchari Health Complex and Noab Ali and Sunil Sarkar died being admitted the hospital.
As the news spread, Bengali settlers attacked the villages of Shankhola, Taikarma, Sica, Riyamrang and Padachhara, home to ethnic minority people and burnt at least 60 houses in the villages.
A Marma young man, Remong Marma, was reportedly hacked to death at Shankhola, villagers said.
The Hafchari union council chairman, Cha Thowai Marma, said that the Bengali settlers had burnt down at
least 100 houses in his union.
Mongshoi Marma, a headman at Guimara, said that the villages of ethnic minority people left their homesteads for safety in the forest.
Panic gripped the entire district and ethnic minority communities at Ramgargh and Manikchari.
Violence also spilled over to Jaliapara, Manikchari upazila headquarters and Mohamuni. Shops owned by ethnic minority people at the Manikchari market place were looted and eight houses at Mahamuni were also burnt during a procession the Bengali settlers brought out in the area. The marchers were carrying a body of the three deceased.
At Jaliapara, Bengali settlers were stopping every vehicle and looking for ethnic minority people. Senior government official Jyoti Ranjan Chakma was taken off a bus there and severely beaten up.
Reports from Manikchari said that almost all the houses of the ethnic minority people on both sides of the Chittagong–Khagrachari Highway between the Manikchari district headquarters and Jaliapara were looted and most of the houses were burnt.
Vehicle movement on Chittagong–Khagrachari and Feni–Khagrachari highways came to a halt. Additional policemen and soldiers have been deployed in the two upazilas.
The superintendent of police of Khagrachari, Abu Kalam Siddique, confirmed the death of three Bengalis but could not say whether any ethnic minority people were killed in the violence. ‘We are extremely busy and cannot talk with you right now,’ he said over telephone in the evening.
The Khagrachari deputy commissioner, Anis-ul-Haque Bhuiyan, said he was informed of the violence. ‘We will not tolerate it. Action will be taken against the people responsible for the violence.’
The Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti president, Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma, condemned the attack on ethnic minority villages after attempts to grab their land. ‘The Bengali settlers attacked the villages at the direct patronisation of security forces.’
The United People’s Democratic Front and its front organisations condemned the attack and demanded arrest and trial of the people responsible for the attacks.
UPDF front organisations will bring out a procession in Dhaka University today in protest at the attack.
Earlier on April 14, the Bengali settlers cleared the forest on a half of the disputed hillock when the ethnic people were celebrating Baisuk, Sangrai and Biju.
The hill people at the time lodged complaints with the Ramgarh upazila nirbahi officer and the superintendent of police of Khagrachari but no action had been taken, the sources said.
Courtesy of New Age
