A delegation of rights and development activists visited the 16 Pahariya families at Mollapara in Rajshahi city on Sunday amid fear of eviction from the land they had been living in for over five decades.
The activists expressed solidarity with the families urging the government to ensure their safety and rights to live in that land.
They also demanded that the interim government should immediately establish a land commission for the plainsland national minority communities to safeguard their rights.
The visiting team included senior journalist Sohrab Hasan, Nagorik Uddyog chief executive Zakir Hossain, Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti central member Dipayan Khisa, Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust representative Minhajul Kadir, and Green Voice central leader Ahsan Habib.
Speaking to reporters after the visit, Zakir Hossain said that the Paharia families had their lives rooted in Mollapara.
鈥極ne cannot suddenly claim ownership of the land where these people have lived for 50 years,鈥� he said, adding that if the original owner was gone, the land should revert to the state, not to a private claimant.
鈥榃e demand that the government record this land in the names of these families,鈥� he stressed.
Dipayan Khisa questioned the timing of the sudden eviction attempt, 鈥榃hy now, after all these years?鈥�
Urging the government to reflect its policy of inclusion in reality, Dipayan said, 鈥楾hese families are being left out. Land grabbers must be arrested, and a small police outpost set up here to give safety to these families鈥� safety鈥�.
BLAST coordinator Samina Begum remarked that without a land commission dedicated to the plainsland national minorities their rights would remain unfulfilled.
According to the Pahariya families, in early 1972, immediately after the War of Independence was over, a man named Indra Dhupi allowed six national minority families to build houses and live on his 38 decimals of land in Mollapara, now under Ward 2 of Rajshahi City Corporation.
Indra Dhupi, who had no children, died in the mid-1990s and over the years those six Pahariya families now have grown to 16 families with the area has come to be known as Adibasipara.
Recently, however, a man named Sajjad Ali claimed that Indra Dhupi had sold the land to him before his death and ordered the families to vacate by September 7.
His order triggered outrage after the local media exposed the move, sparking widespread protests that forced Sajjad Ali to back down on his ownership claim for now.
Rights activists, student groups, and development workers formed human chains to protest the eviction attempt.
Leaders of Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Jatiyatabadi Juba Dal, student and youth wings of Bangladesh Nationalist Party respectively, also held a human chain and planted trees in Mollapara on Sunday afternoon, expressing support to the families.
The Left Democratic Alliance and National Adivasi Parishad separately staged demonstrations, condemning the attempted eviction and calling for immediate government intervention.
