Name:vvk •
Title: Fresh attacks on tribals in Bangladesh. •
Date posted: 05/15/11 19:42
Q: Fresh attacks on tribals in Bangladesh, "a problem of land, not religion"
Two people were injured, at least 23 homes destroyed. It is the latest episode in a problem that seems to have no solution. Police and military complicit, as a source explains to AsiaNews.
Chittagong (AsiaNews) - Two villagers of the tribal people - majority animist, Christian and Buddhist - were injured and at least 23 houses destroyed in an attack by Muslim Bangladeshi settlers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the border area of South East Bangladesh with India and Myanmar. The attack, only reported today, dates back to February 17 and followed the death of a settler in the area. The circumstances of his death are still unknown, but local sources say that the signs of a struggle or injury were not found on the body, and that the man suffered from attacks of epilepsy.
Episodes like this are common in Bangladesh. A year ago, Jan. 22, three tribal persons were killed and at least 450 homes destroyed. A source for AsiaNews, anonymous for security reasons, confirms the recurrence of similar attacks and denounces the complicity of police and security forces and the silence of the government.
"I can say that this is a frequent occurrence. Bangladesh is experiencing a strong period of overpopulation and the tribal lands are increasingly attractive to so-called Bangladeshis settlers, who live in other parts of the country. The system they use is always the same: through friends and acquaintances, mostly members of military or police forces, they locate areas with a view to moving there. Once there, they find some excuse to give rise to a conflict with the tribals: they go to collect wood or fruit, for example, in the tribal areas for cultivation. These in turn react and chase them away, and this is when the settlers return with a larger group and devastate villages, burning houses, beating people and, in some tragic cases, killing them. The tribals - continues the source - try to defend themselves, but then the police or army arrive stopping everything, without proceeding with investigations of any kind. Thus the situation never changes, you can never figure out who's right and who is wrong. Which means, in practice, the whole situation remains at an impasse and the land is handed over to the Bangladeshis".
The authorities make no attempt to stop the settler attacks, nor to resolve the situation. The tribals, says our source, are really "abandoned to themselves, often when they try to make a complaint, the police do not accept it. Because it's convenient to see the tribal disappear, or at least take up less Bangladeshi land so that there is an outlet for the overpopulation. Moreover, since the people are in some way favoured by the army, the government does not want to go against the military. There are moments in which it operates, when it tries to do something, but in essence the problem is never resolved”.
The issue therefore, is not religious, even though the perpetrators are Muslim and tribal communities, however, mostly animist (the majority), Buddhist and Christian. "The question - in fact, specifies the source for AsiaNews - it's only land. It becomes religious in consequence, because the tribal are not Muslims and are more vulnerable, considered inferior, but in any case these are not attacks of a religious or national background,. Although the tribals say, 'Muslims have done this', it is only because - he concludes - in everyday language, as they see say it, Bangladeshi is synonymous with Muslim". (G.M.)
Name:vvk •
Date: 05/15/11 19:47
A: Buddhist communities come under threat in Bangladesh
By Carleton Cole, The Nation, April 19, 2011; Published on the Buddhist Channel, May 15, 2011
Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh -- While most of the South Asian nation's population is Muslim, 85 per cent of people in the rugged Chittagong Hill Tracts are Theravada Buddhist.
[[ On the map, Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region looks like an appendix oddly dangling southeastward from the rest of Bangladesh - and indeed it is a world apart.
At a recent press conference called "Muslim-Buddhist Conflict in Bangladesh: A Call for Peace" held by the Bangladesh Jumma Buddhist Forum at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT), speakers from the organisation explained about the uneasiness in which the region is gripped, and the recent breakdown in the on-and-off peace process.
At the event, the Venerable Phra Dipayan Chakma, president of the Bangladesh Jumma Buddhist Forum Thailand, said that "On February 11, Bengali Muslims tried to forcibly grab a Buddhist cremation place with the help of the Bangladeshi military at Naniaychar sub-district."
The senior monk added: "On February 17 Bengali Muslims and the Bangladeshi Border Guard jointly attacked a Jumma Buddhist village at Longudu sub-district of the Rangsmsi Hill Tracts. They burnt down 30 Jumma houses and seriously wounded two Buddhists."
These are only the latest in a litany of tragic events that have marred the Chittagong Hill Tracts since 1980, including a long string of murders of Buddhists.
Phra Dipayan accused the Bangladeshi government of attempting to shift the demographic balance by transplanting more than 400,000 Bengali Muslims into the Chittagong Hill Tracts. He said that the scheme is illegal under international law and constitutes a war crime under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
"The Bengali Muslim settlers and Bangladesh military have jointly committed more than one dozen massacres and killed thousands of innocent Jumma Buddhists with total impunity. In addition they have committed arson, land grabbing, rape and looting."
Also in attendance at the conference was HM Raja Tridiv Roy, the former Chakma king. The Chakmas are a Tibeto-Burman people that stand out from the Indo-Aryan Bangladeshis. Roy, whose son is king of the Chakmas, said the government under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed is to be commended for attempting to implement the UN-backed Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Treaty of 1997, "However the situation has not improved. There has been a clear pattern of violence against indigenous people by the security forces. Most of the abuses have not been investigated."
In past decades, the Buddhist Chakmas have rebelled against the central government. The two sides signed the 1997 peace treaty, which guaranteed the indigenous Buddhists the rights that had been promised to them long ago.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts is one of only a few remaining Buddhist regions in South Asia, alongside Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Ladakh.
"We want to amend the constitution to reflect the special status that the Chittagong Hill Tracts has enjoyed since the British period," said the former king to a room of a half dozen journalists who were outnumbered by about two to one by Thai Buddhist monks.
Usually packed with journalists at evening press conferences, this morning press conference at the FCCT was sparsely attended, which, never mind the event's early start, reflects the lack of international interest in and knowledge of the issue.
"Buddhists are a minority in Bangladesh. Buddhists in Thailand must help out. It is the duty of a government to protect its people, no matter their religion. Some Muslim countries do not respect other religions. But we live together and die together," said Roy.
Promotional information for the talk stated that "Violence between indigenous Buddhists and Bengali Muslims has plagued the Chittagong Hill Tracts region of Bangladesh for the past 40 years. This situation has drawn comparisons to the southern insurgency in Thailand, where a Muslim minority live in a Buddhist majority."
The former monarch said that "Thailand's Muslims try to defend themselves but Buddhists in Bangladesh do not know how to defend themselves."
With its 46 clans, the Chakma minority is the biggest ethnic group in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, making up more than half the tribal population. In addition to dominating in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Chakma communities spill over into neighbouring India. Bangladeshi and Indian Chakmas have the same culture, language and religion.
Phra Dipayan said, "The British recognised the Chakma king and gave him special status in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. By the Act of 1900, the Chittagong Hill Tracts was to be administered independently as a "Special Area.
"According to the 1900 regulation, people who lived outside of the Chittagong Hill Tracts could only enter it for a period of up to 24 hours. The law offered great protection for the Jumma Buddhist people."
Echoing that half a century later was Pakistan's first leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who promised to respect the Chittagong Hill Tracts Special Area status.
At the time of India's independence in 1947, the Chittagong Hill Tracts was 97 per cent Buddhist and two per cent Muslim, which led Phra Dipayan to proclaim that the annexation of the small Buddhist area into East Pakistan, which Bangladesh was then known as, was a "great mistake".
Wikipedia quotes Philip Ziegler, the official biographer Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last British viceroy to India, as saying "the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts was uppermost in Mountbatten's mind" at the time of India's independence in 1947, and that he worried about how India would react to the Chittagong Hill Tracts being awarded to East Pakistan.
"India's indignation at the award of the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Pakistan may have been a factor in making up Mountbatten's mind to keep the reports to himself till after independence," writes Ziegler.
No matter what form of government may prevail on the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the speakers agreed that pursuing needed change through peace and diplomacy should be a top priority for all sides.
-------------
Carleton Cole is a freelance journalist based in Bangkok
Name:sam •
Date: 05/19/11 17:13
A: BANGLADESH
"majority animist, Christian and Buddhist - were injured and at least 23 houses destroyed in an attack by Muslim Bangladeshi settlers "
PALESTINE
Before 1948 , few Jews lived in Palestine side by side in peace with the Christians and the Muslims, All been under the British [Christian]occupation.
In Europe, the English and the French planed a creation of a home for the Jews in Palestine. The HATE for the Jews in Europe was a fact, and they wanted to get rid of what left of them after their massacre by the Germans.
Many of the Jews who came to Palestine were trained and well armed by the Europeans who won the war, and they had their army established before 1948, while the Palestinians had no arm or trainings , and been attacked and killed and their homes destroyed and with many massacres commited by the Jews, the new setlers they had no choice except to flee, leaving everything behind, and hundred of thousands became refugees liveng in tents under the worst condition that can be imagined !!!!. [THE WORLD IS BLIND]
All that happen under the eyes of the whole world. And all the Christian nations supported the creation of a nation which built on the misery of the others, THOSE WHO LIVED IN PALESTINE FOR THOUSAND OF YEARS.
More Jews came to Palestine from all around. More Palestinians lose their homes and more became refugees. They blame the Palestinians for defending their home, and the Arab neighbors who supported them, and they support the aggressors who came from Europe, Asia, and Africa etc., !!!.
Decades passed, and we are in the 21st century, and the small nation which the west created is growing day by day. Many Palestinians still living as refugees outside their land or jailed with no right in their own land. They are humiliated and treatedvery badly, and they has no security for their life, and their home can be buldozed, destroyed , or be given to a new setler from Russia or Etheopia, and their farms can be taken for any reason, and what about the WALL which separate the people from their relatives or their farms ?.
They talk about peace !!!, but they never talk about giving the Palestinians their rights, or about bringing the refugees back to their home and their land !!!.
WHO IS THE TERRORIST ?, IS HE THE ONE WHO TRY TO DEFEND HIS HOME AND HIS LAND OR THE ONE WHO CAME FROM OUTSIDE TO STEAL THE LAND AND KILL ITS PEOPLE ?.
AGGRESSIONS AND HOSTILITIES ALL AROUND THE WORLD.
Let us not to forget the people of TIBET, who are suffering from the Chinese occupation.
{between 200 thousand and 1 million Tibetans died,[46] and approximately 6,000 monasteries were destroyed .}
v v k Let us present the whole picture of suffering all around the world and condemn it .
Muslims, Christians and jews religions condemn killing, but people still kill, and it is not the religion that kills you should undrstand this fact.
THE COMMANDMENT [FROM MOSES AND JESUS]
- YOU SHALL NOT MURDER.......YOU SHALL NOT STEAL
QURAN - 5:32 WHOEVER KILLS A SOUL UNLESS FOR A SOUL OR FOR CORRUPTION DONE IN THE LAND IT IS AS IF HE HAD SLAIN MANKIND ENTIRELY. AND WHOEVER SAVES ONE IT IS AS IF HE HAD SAVED MANKIND ENTIRELY.
Here the Quran forbid killings, but giving a law to protect the society by punishing the killer, and also punishing those who do corruption in the land which is most of the time much worse that killing a soul. For example: Hitler, Saddam, Stalin, bin laden and so on. Such people by the Islam laws should be punished, and killing them is permitted to save the world from their crimes. THE ISLAM LAWS IS TOTAL AND CLEAR.
The western laws are not total laws and not clear, a killer can be killed and anothe killer put in jail for life and another with good lawyer and $$$$, can serve no time in jail. and those who corrupt in the land, from drug dealers, to the gangs to the maffia etc., can keep their work under the protection of the western laws no matter how much damage done to the society !!!!.
IN the MODERN laws, KILLING A PERSON A BIG CRIME, BUT, BUT KILLING A NATION IS A MATTER OF OPINION AND A MATTER FOR DISCUSSION.
