THE violence leading to deaths, injuries and destruction of houses and businesses of national minority communities in Khagrachari is a consequence of ethnically biased state policies towards the national minorities of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, an issue that successive governments left unattended. On September 28, at least three Marma youths were killed and several dozen were injured, including some members of law enforcement agencies, during a roadblock programme in Khagrachhari鈥檚 Guimara upazila. The roadblock was called to protest the rape of a minor Marma girl and demand the immediate arrest of the rapists, and it continued defying the curfew imposed on September 27. Locals say that, fearing habitual delay in arresting the perpetrator, ordinary people as well as primarily CHT-based student and political groups started organising immediately after the report of rape on September 23. The protests, however, quickly turned into an occasion of communal and state violence when several minority youths were reportedly attacked with machetes on September 27. Locals鈥� fear is not unfounded, given justice historically remained elusive in the CHT.
The CHT affairs adviser, as well as the home affairs adviser, assured that perpetrators of the violence in Guimara would be brought to justice, but their assurance rings hollow as they failed to ensure justice for the grave violations of human rights since the interim government was installed in August 2024. In September 2024, at least three ethnic minority youths were killed, and over 200 houses and business establishments of minority communities were razed to the ground in Khagrachhari and Rangamati, but a year later, the public remains in the dark about the investigation and progress of the legal proceedings. Instead of providing legal support, women of ethnic minority communities are subjected to further state surveillance and violence, as is evidenced in the rape and sexual assault of two Marma sisters in Rangamati in 2018. The protest against the rape of two Marma sisters allegedly perpetrated by men in uniform was violently repressed, and the legal case remained frozen. In the context of this long history of impunity, the home adviser鈥檚 comment, which squarely terms the Guimara violence as a conspiracy of the fallen regime, is disturbingly similar to the ways past governments have responded to violence against minority communities in the CHT.
The interim government should, therefore, not see the recent episode of violence and extrajudicial killing in isolation but rather in the context of decades of ethnically chauvinistic state policies towards the national minority communities in Bangladesh. In doing so, the government should ensure a timely, credible probe into the deaths, injuries and destruction in Khagrachari. It must act because a political resolution to the instability will not only pave the way for pluralist democracy in Bangladesh, it will also secure its border and protect its geopolitical interests.
