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Friday, 20 June 2014

Paritosh Chakma denies issuing press statement against Mizoram govt

via Mizo News on June 20, 2014

Mizoram Chakma Development Forum (MCDF)


Aizawl: Former Mizoram Chakma Development Forum (MCDF) leader Paritosh Chakma has denied issuing a press statement which allegedly accused the Mizoram government of ignoring the “plight of the Chakma community”.

In a letter sent to several Mizoram dailies and dozens of online publications, including Mizonews.Net, the Delhi-based MCDF has accused the state with neglecting the problems faced by the Chakma population especially in view of the Mizo Zirlai Pawl’s plan to build a rest house at Borapansury under the Chakma Autonomous District Council.
Below is the full text of the letter.
Dear Editor,
I am writing to bring to your urgent notice about an ARTICLE published by the Mizonews.net titled “Mizoram government ignoring Chakmas’ plight” published in the OP-ED section on 17.6.2014. The link of the article is http://www.mizonews.net/op-ed/mizoram-government-ignoring-chakmas-plight/.
This is to inform you that the said article is not written by me and it seems that someone has misused my name. This is to further clarify that I am not associated with the Mizoram Chakma Development Forum (MCDF) in any way presently. It has been long since I resigned from being an office bearer of MCDF. 
The article deals with a highly sensitive issue in Mizoram. Since the article is not written by me and my name has been misused, I request you to kindly remove my name from the article at the earliest. Kindly inform me as soon as my name is removed from the article at my email.
Thanks,
Paritosh Chakma

New Delhi 

Tuesday, 17 June 2014

Mizoram govt fails to provide adequate educational institution, says Mizoram Chakma Students' Union

via Mizo News on June 17, 2014

Mizoram Chakma Students' Union members take part in the protest rally in Kamalanagar, Chawngte, Mizoram on June 13, 2014.

Kamalanagar: Mizoram may take pride in being the third highest literate state in the country. However, hundreds of students have been deprived off educational facilities every year at the remote Chakma town of Kamalanagar.

The issue has become gravely serious when hundreds of students could not secure admission in the lone Government Kamalanagar Higher Secondary School this year.
According to the Mizoram Chakma Students’ Union, the Principal had rejected the admission of more than 114 students citing inadequate infrastructure.
“More than 400 students passed out HSLC in this academic year only in CADC area. The lone Govt. Kamalanagar Higher Secondary School has to cater to Chawngte ‘L’ and Chawngte ‘P’ town of Lunglei District and LADC area as well,” they said.
To press their demand the students community lead by Mizoram Chakma Students’ Union met the local MLA and other political leaders along with the Principal of GKHSS on 12th May 2014, however without any solution. Thousands of students marched in ‘Mass Peace Procession’ on 23rd May, 2014 and subsequently, submitted a petition to the Hon’ble Minister i/c School & Education etc. Govt. of Mizoram on 23rd May 2014 to resolve the problem immediately.
Seeing no positive response, the most prominent Chakma students’ Organisation MCSU called for an all NGOs joint meeting held on 8th June, 2014 and formed a Joint Action Committee (JAC) to pursue the students’ demand. The MCSU lead JAC has called for a 1 (one) day Kamalanagar Total Bandh on 13th June 2014 to make their demand heard by the authority.
“The bandh was successful with the strong support from Branch YMA of Chawngte ‘L’ and Branch YMA/YLA of Chawngte ‘P’ whose area children are also suffering due to the inadequate institution for Higher Secondary education. Even the village councils of Chawngte area came forward to support the total Bandh,” the student body said.
Chawngte area is home to more than 100 villages with 60,000 plus population who seek higher education at Kamalanagar. With the successful Bandh, MCSU hope that the state Govt. will hear the students cry and provide immediate solution so that the deprived students could continue their studies and contribute towards Mizoram progress.

Tuesday, 10 June 2014

Tibeto-Burman populations of Bangladesh had Indian ancestry

PTI | Hyderabad: A new study has found that the Tibeto-Burman populations of Bangladesh carry substantially higher mainland Indian ancestry component than either northeast Indian or Southeast Asian Tibeto-Burman speaking people.

"We carried out a detailed genetic analysis of three major tribal populations (Chakma, Marma and Tripura) from Bangladesh, who speak a branch of Tibeto-Burman language and compared them with our large data-set from India and Southeast Asia," Kumarasamy Thangaraj of CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) said here. 

"We observed that the Bangladesh Tibeto-Burman populations carry substantially higher mainland Indian ancestry component than either northeast Indian or Southeast Asian Tibeto-Burmans speaking people," he said.

A team of scientists led by Thangaraj, in collaboration with Nurun Nahar Gazi Sultana and her team from University of Dhaka, have studied the origin and affinity of Bangladeshi tribal populations for the first time using all genetic systems (mtDNA, Y chromosome and autosomes) that are used for population-based studies.

Bangladesh is bordered by eastern India in west, northeastern India in north and east and it also shares a narrow boundary with Myanmar on the southeastern rim. 

Its geographical placement epitomised it as an important linguistic contact zone, Thangaraj said.

Although the Indian populations inhabited around Bangladesh have been fairly studied, the tribal populations living in the coastal as well as Chittagong hill tract regions have not been studied to understand their origin and relationship, he said.

The results of the collaborative study have been published in international journal PLOS ONE and suggested several leads to the debate over the possibility, probable location and ways of human movements from India and Myanmar to Bangladesh.

"The genetic studies so far on south and southeast Asian populations suggested that the expansion of Tibeto-Burman population happened very recently in India from southeast Asia, while we have found a more complex population history of south Asian Tibeto-Burman speakers than it was suggested before and our study stretches the time of migration from mid Holocene to early holocene," the CCMB quoted Gyaneshwar Chaubey, co-author and a molecular biologist at the Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, Estonia, as saying. 

According to the authors, "The age of Y chromosal major haplogroups, ranging from 14-18 Kya, suggests that they arose before the differentiation of any language group and at approximately the same time.

"Contrary to the previous scenario proposed for colonisation of northeast India as male founder effect has occurred within the past 4,000 years, we suggest a significantly deep colonisation of this region.

"Unlike Austroasiatic (Munda) speakers of India, we observed equal roles of both males and females in shaping the Tibeto-Burman expansion in Southern Asia," CCMB quoted Nurun Nahar Gazi Sultana as saying.

"Such collaborative studies are always useful in determining the role of people of India in early human migrations," CCMB Director Mohan Rao said.

Also see: http://zeenews.india.com/news/science/tibeto-burman-populations-of-bangladesh-had-indian-ancestry_883540.html

Sunday, 8 June 2014

The Chakmas, Marmas and Tripuras of Bangladesh had Indian ancestry, says study

ZEE NEWS Article | Hyderabad: A new study has found that the Tibeto-Burman populations of Bangladesh carry substantially higher mainland Indian ancestry component than either northeast Indian or Southeast Asian Tibeto-Burman speaking people.
“We carried out a detailed genetic analysis of three major tribal populations (Chakma, Marma and Tripura) from Bangladesh, who speak a branch of Tibeto-Burman language and compared them with our large data-set from India and Southeast Asia,” Kumarasamy Thangaraj of CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) said here.
“We observed that the Bangladesh Tibeto-Burman populations carry substantially higher mainland Indian ancestry component than either northeast Indian or Southeast Asian Tibeto-Burmans speaking people,” he said.
A team of scientists led by Thangaraj, in collaboration with Nurun Nahar Gazi Sultana and her team from University of Dhaka, have studied the origin and affinity of Bangladeshi tribal populations for the first time using all genetic systems (mtDNA, Y chromosome and autosomes) that are used for population-based studies.
Bangladesh is bordered by eastern India in west, northeastern India in north and east and it also shares a narrow boundary with Myanmar on the southeastern rim.
Its geographical placement epitomised it as an important linguistic contact zone, Thangaraj said.
Although the Indian populations inhabited around Bangladesh have been fairly studied, the tribal populations living in the coastal as well as Chittagong hill tract regions have not been studied to understand their origin and relationship, he said.
The results of the collaborative study have been published in international journal PLOS ONE and suggested several leads to the debate over the possibility, probable location and ways of human movements from India and Myanmar to Bangladesh.
“The genetic studies so far on south and southeast Asian populations suggested that the expansion of Tibeto-Burman population happened very recently in India from southeast Asia, while we have found a more complex population history of south Asian Tibeto-Burman speakers than it was suggested before and our study stretches the time of migration from mid Holocene to early holocene,” the CCMB quoted Gyaneshwar Chaubey, co-author and a molecular biologist at the Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, Estonia, as saying.
According to the authors, “The age of Y chromosal major haplogroups, ranging from 14-18 Kya, suggests that they arose before the differentiation of any language group and at approximately the same time.
“Contrary to the previous scenario proposed for colonisation of northeast India as male founder effect has occurred within the past 4,000 years, we suggest a significantly deep colonisation of this region.
“Unlike Austroasiatic (Munda) speakers of India, we observed equal roles of both males and females in shaping the Tibeto-Burman expansion in Southern Asia,” CCMB quoted Nurun Nahar Gazi Sultana as saying.
“Such collaborative studies are always useful in determining the role of people of India in early human migrations,” CCMB Director Mohan Rao said.

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Chakmas boycott MDC bypoll in Mizoram

Press Trust of India| Aizawl June 4, 2014/ BorapansuryThe Chakma community members did not cast a single vote during the bye-election to the member of the Chakma Autonomous District Council in the Boranpansury-II seat today after a boycott call by the NGOs and political parties.
No ballot was cast in any of the three polling stations.
The NGOs including the Young Chakma Association (YCA) and political parties boycotted the bypoll after the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) or the Mizo Students Federation displayed a signboard in Borapansury-I village where the student body has proposed to construct 'Zofate Khualbuk' or the 'Mizos Inn'.
The Chakma community members protested the allotment of government land to the MZP inside the area of the CADC.
Reports from the election authorities at Borapansury-II said that while all the official polling parties were in the polling stations, not a single election agent or voter turned up to exercise franchise.
The bypoll in the Borapansury-II seat of the CADC was necessitated after the seat was vacated by the former Chief Executive Member of the CADC Dr B D Chakma who was elected to the Mizoram legislature in the 2013 state assembly polls and later became a minister of state.
Other bypolls held in two seats in Lai autonomous district council (LADC) and one seat in Mara autonomous district council (MADC) were held smoothly.

Tuesday, 3 June 2014

Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), a militant Mizo student organization illegally grabbing Chakma's land, says Malin Chakma, Chairman, Joint Action Committee (JAC)

Aizawl (Mizo News)/Borapansury: The Chakmas of Borapansury village in southern Mizoram, who are not happy with the Mizo Zirlai Pawl’s (MZP) plan to build a ‘Chawlbuk’ (rest house), said that the student body is involved in an “illegal land grabbing” case.
Leaders of the students body and some Mizo youths have put a sign board “MZP Ram” literally meaning ‘MZP Land’ on a plot of land measuring 2500 sq mtrs in the vicinity of Borapansury village, which the villgers claimed has been “encroached illegally”. The MZP said the land is for building a Chawlbuk (rest house).
A statement signed by Dangu Malin Chakma, Chairman, Joint Action Committee (JAC), had said today that, “As per documents (Memo No. G.32011/62/2011-12/CADC (G)/852) made available by the Chakma Autonomous District Council which is the land allotment Authority within CADC area, did not allot any land to the MZP.”
The JAC added that “unlawful and terror activities” such as physical torture, racially motivated abuses, humiliation, demand of free dog meat by the MZP activists, every time they visit the area created fear psychosis among the villagers of Borapansury.
“The MZP terror surfaced more when MZP President Mr. Lalhmachhuana talked about bloodshed in the meeting with the Joint Action Committee leaders on May 31, 2014, at Borapansury, which was supposed to be a cordial meeting. The MZP President further threatened to terrorise the Borapansury villagers by instigating the Mizo community against the Chakma villagers. Therefore the Chakma villagers of Borapansury considers the MZP’s “Zofate Chawlbuk” is just an excuse to harass them,” the JAC statement said.
The Chakmas said they fear for their lives and claimed that they have not received response from the State government.
“The people of Borapansury are left with no option but to peacefully boycott the upcoming MDC bye-election at Borapansury-2 to make their cry heard by the State government,” the statement added.
It also reminded the MZP to read the CADC (Sixth Schedule to the Constitution of India) Land Rights Rule if any land is allotted by CADC Authority within CADC Area, to any State or Central Government Department; it is legally binding to utilize that land for the purpose intended only not otherwise.
“In this case also, Civil Supply Department has no legal rights to transfer any portion of land allotted to them to anyone else. As such there are already 2 Rest Houses at Borapansury. The Chakma community has no objection in the government building any number of rest houses. Our sole objection to MZP is to their illegal act of land grabbing, to their unlawful activities, to their threats and causing communal tensions,” the JAC said.
The JAC said it welcome “Mizo brothers and sisters to visit Borapansury and any Chakma area and enjoy the Chakma community’s hospitality.”
“The Chakmas of Borapansury want peace and harmony. But we do not welcome trouble makers like MZP activists,” they said.
Other allegations made by the JAC against the Mizo Zirlai Pawl
(Mizonews.Net cannot independently verify these claims)
23rd Aug 2013: MZP with large number of cadres visited Borapansury. One among many visits. MZP cadres forced local residents to remain locked inside their homes. Physically assaulted a person and made him stand in Jesus Crucifix position under the hot sun for hours11th March 2014: All India radio Aizawl announced about MZP’s impending visit13th March 2014: Local residents submitted petition to the DC – Lawngtlai District for security citing reasons why they fear MZP’s move and hence oppose.2nd May 2014: MZP with 35 cadres visited the Borapansury. Put up illegal signboards at the encroached land (2500+ sqm) site. MZP cadres defecated in the open in spite of available toilets, to humiliate the local residents. Demanded forced labour whenever they come to construct MZP Chawlbuk at the encroached site. Ordered local people and VCPs to look after the signboards. Ate eatables from many shops without any payment. Demanded dog meat to be served when they come to visit next.21st May 2014: Joint petition to CEM-CADC, governor, Home Minister, DC-Lawngtlai etc. for justice.22nd May 2014: CEM of CADC clarified with a letter that No land has been allotted to MZP and shall not be allotted.23rd May 2014: CEM-CADC wrote to DC-Lawngtlai to remove the illegal encroachment at Borapansury30th May 2014: Seeing no response from the State authority and left with no option the local people with the help of JAC (combining all NGOs, all political parties and Community elders) submitted a final appeal to the authority through the CEM-CADC to remove the encroachment within 2nd June 2014, else public decided to peacefully boycott the upcoming MDC bye-election at Borapansury-II on 4th June 2014 to make their issue heard by the State Govt.31st May 2014: Instead of Govt authority to discuss the matter with local residents MZP cadres lead by its president Lalmachhuana arrived at Borapansury. Sought to meet the Joint Action Committee leaders, verbally threatened of bloodshed if they are not allowed to do whatever they like at the encroached land site, and accused every Chakma of being a foreigner. MZP cadres put up another sign board.1st June 2014: MZP team visited Borapansury again and are still at Borapansury.


Monday, 2 June 2014

The lands of Kalindi Rani - A Chakma Queen

By Kabita Chakma

A thorn in the side of the colonisers of the Chittagong Hill Tracts continues to offer inspiration today.
Kalindi Rani, who ruled from 1832 to 1873, was the 45th ruler of the Chakmas. Her kingdom was outside the southeastern edge of what was then British Bengal. It had for a century been a target of appropriation by the British, who had been in control of Chittagong since 1760. In 1860, Kalindi’s kingdom was colonised, the British subsequently expropriating land and dividing the territory into parts. However, Kalindi’s kingdom was not only dismembered, but also ‘re-membered’ by the new cartography of the British by naming part of the old kingdom the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).
Retaken: Kalindi Rani's Rajanagar Rajbari is now part of Chittagong district
Photo: Monojit Chakma
Kalindi herself can be similarly ‘re-membered’ through an exploration of the struggles for indigenous rights in Southasia, particularly with regards to land. Land and resources in the CHT have constituted a major flashpoint since British colonisation. In 1947, while the population of the CHT was only three percent Muslim, the British awarded it to East Pakistan. In 1971, East Pakistan came to be known as Bangladesh. Today, the CHT is the borderland between Bangladesh, India and Burma. It is the traditional home of 11 indigenous hill peoples, of whom the Chakma constitute the largest group. These groups differ markedly from the Bengali majority in physical features, language, culture, religion, dressing, food habit, farming method and architecture.
There was British interest in the land of the Chakma-raj immediately after the former’s colonisation of Chittagong. Initially, the British intended to create a land passage to East Asia. Harry Verelst, assuming the position of the first chief of Chittagong in 1760, reported the following year that he had reason to believe that a passage could be found through the eastern hills adjacent to Chittagong, in order to reach Tibet and the northern parts of Cochinchina. The cessionary treaty of 1760, which placed Chittagong under the British East India Company, did not define a boundary of Chittagong. In 1763, however, Verelst proclaimed the local jurisdiction of Shermust Khan, the Chakma raja, to be ‘All the hills from the Pheni river to the Sangu and from the Nizampur Road [the present Dhaka-Chittagong road] to the hills of the Kuki Raja’. But this demarcation was quickly violated by the British, who continued to extract forest products from the area
without permission.
The British also adopted a policy of settling Bengali peasants and landlords from Chittagong to the western part of the Chakma territory. This land appropriation and unauthorised extraction eventually led to armed resistance against the British by Kalindi’s predecessors, who fought from 1772 until 1798. As the resistance was led by two successive Chakma rajas, historians have referred it to as the Chakma bidroha, or resistance. There were, however, other indigenous groups in the area who joined the resistance, most notably a famous Marma warrior named Kheju Roaza, and other hill peoples referred to by the British as Kukis.
Maps vs courts
Cartography was used as an instrument by the British to colonise the Chittagong Hills. Although there is a Portuguese map of the area prepared in 1550 by Joao Baptista Lavanha, who marked the Chakma-inhabited area as ‘Chacomas’, there was no British map until cartographer James Rennell’s completed ‘A New Map of Hindoostan’ in 1779. Renell’s new cartography completely ignored the British demarcation of the Chakma territory of 1773 and falsely incorporated Ranganya (Rangunia), the capital of the Chakma rajas, with Chittagong. On Renell’s map, Rangamati, the second capital, was marked as Rangamuttya, very close to its Chakma name, Rangamattya, but was located outside the newly demarcated Chittagong district.
The1860s annexation of the hills used an undefined boundary. The newly created CHT territory was dismembered and re-membered by further mapping, to increase tax revenue and to establish control over forests. In order to introduce land revenue, there was further redefining of these boundaries in 1863. The following decade, the British proposed replacing the traditional non-territorial, kinship-based jurisdiction with a territorial jurisdiction called the mouza (a territorial unit, consisting of a number of villages). The British first collected land revenue in the CHT from 1874, but the collection system was not fully operational until 1892 when the mouza were introduced.
In 1873, a plan existed to divide the CHT into seven revenue circles, eventually reduced to four circles of which one included several forest reserves. The implementation of the ‘circle rules’ was not easy, with significant resistance from the indigenous peoples. In August 1891, a frustrated W B Oldham, commissioner of the Chittagong division, wrote a letter to the Bengal government stating, ‘the Chakmas are too intelligent and civilized to be bound by such rules and the wild tribes … too barbarous and too nomad.’ He added that dewans, the tax collectors of the Chakma-raj, ‘frequently clamoured for permanent settlement.’
Interestingly, Kalindi tried hard to gain rights for permanent settlement over all lands, to enable the indigenous authorities to collect taxes as proposed by the British, even as she continued the existing traditional capitation (‘couple’) tax, a kinship-based levy. She appealed to the Revenue Board, demanding her rights for permanent settlement, but this was refused in 1866. She was told that she only had the right to collect capitation tax, as the government was the sole proprietor of the land. She appealed to a higher authority but this also failed.
Kalindi resisted British power through its own institutions throughout her rule. To claim her properties, she fought for 12 years in the courts. In 1844, the court finally issued an order that Kalindi was the sole representative of all the properties of the late Raja Dharam Bux Khan. Yet importantly, while Kalindi’s predecessors took up armed struggle against the British, her resistance strategy was through non-violence, deploying traditional and western institutions of power.
In 1860, there were two chiefs in the CHT: Kalindi Rani in the north and centre, and the Bohmong ruler in the south. A third chief, initially termed sarbarakar (tax collector), was a colonial construction to reduce Kalindi’s power. The 1860 general instructions from the government to the CHT British authorities stated that ‘The customs and prejudices of the people [are] to be observed and respected. We are to interfere as little as possible between the chiefs and their tribes.’ Yet violation of these instructions is evident in the division of the Chakma kingdom into parts, which the rani resisted.
In 1867, Captain Thomas Herbert Lewin appointed Maung Kioja Sain, a Marma subject of Kalindi (without the latter’s consent) as sarbarakar. This individual was vested with collecting capitation taxes from the northern part of the Chakma kingdom, thus effectively ignoring the 1860 instructions. Kalindi took the matter to the court, but her claim was rejected in 1870. In explaining the reason for dividing the rani’s kingdom, it was noted, ‘Though nominally the northern section belonged to the Chakma Chief, yet owing to the distances there was no control over the people, and great inconveniences was experienced by the absence of any head to whom references could be made when occasion arose.’ To protect the southern boundary, Kalindi made a written agreement with the Bohmong chief in 1869.
Kalindi not only lodged complaints against violations of the 1860 instructions. She also sent Harish Chandra, her grandson and heir, to see the lieutenant-governor of Bengal in Calcutta. As a result, an independent inquiry took place, finding that the 1860 instructions indeed were not being sufficiently observed. However, in 1873, the year Kalindi Rani died, the dismembering of her kingdom, initially proposed by Lewin after appointing Maung Kioja Sain, was considered. This was finally brought into effect in 1884 by creating a third circle, known as the Mong circle. Thus, Kalindi’s kingdom was reduced to only one circle.
Flooding the hills
Kalindi’s lifelong resistance to loss of her subjects’ land rights was assumed by many colonial officers to be simply a personal feud. In his 1992 book, Thangliena: Life of T. H. Lewin, Amongst Wild Tribes Of India’s North East Frontier, biographer John Whitehead described Kalindi Rani as ‘a formidable old lady’, and identified her as ‘Lewin’s implacable enemy’. The cumulative outcome of the coloniser’s strategies was that the indigenous peoples of the CHT were dispossessed from the vast majority of their traditional lands, particularly those appropriated as ‘reserved’ forests. Paradoxically, the British period is also widely recognised as a time of relative peace and reasonable living conditions for the hill people. These conditions resulted from the enactment of the CHT Regulation of 1900, which imposed restrictions on the settlement of outsiders and a bar on the sale or transfer of land to non-indigenous individuals.
Pakistan and Bangladesh, however, removed restrictions and encouraged settlements, which resulted in large-scale dispossession of indigenous lands. Prior to 1971, this dispossession resulted from Pakistan’s development priorities. In 1959, the construction of the Kaptai hydro-electric facility created an enormous reservoir, which submerged 40 percent of the CHT’s fertile agricultural land and rendered homeless some 100,000 people – more than a quarter of the population. Only a tiny amount of the promised compensation for submerged lands was ever delivered.
Land dispossession continued as the result of nationalist policies of assimilation and marginalisation. Prime Minister Sheikh Mujib himself is reported to have threatened indigenous leaders with the inundation of the CHT with plainland Bengalis, a threat that led to growing resistance by the hill people. The Bangladesh government responded with intense militarisation and massive transmigration of Bengalis into the CHT from 1975 onwards. As a result, thousands of hill people fled to India, while thousands more were displaced within Bangladesh. While Bengalis constituted only nine percent of the CHT’s population in 1951, by 1991 they made up fully half. The following year, the CHT was described by the CHT Commission as the most militarised area in the world – one security person for every 10 civilians.
Only recently have indigenous-rights campaigns in the CHT been gaining prominence in the national and international arenas. Most recently, this included the 25 May presentation of a report on the CHT by UN Special Rapporteur Lars-Anders Baer to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. This report warns that a third of the Bangladesh Army is stationed in the CHT, which constitutes just a tenth of the country; and that the most important parts of the 1997 Peace Accord, aimed at ending more than two decades of armed conflict in the CHT, remain either unimplemented or only partially implemented.
Fourteen years after the Accord, resistance by indigenous peoples against the dispossession of their lands in the CHT continues. Kalindi Rani’s relentless but non-violent struggle against colonisation and loss of land rights thus remains relevant and inspiring.
~ Kabita Chakma is the coordinator of the CHT Jumma Peoples Network of the Asia Pacific and the Human Rights Coordinator of the CHT Indigenous Jumma Association Australia.

Sunday, 1 June 2014

Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) forcefully grabbing the Chakma's land and threatening them to bloodshed in Mizoram

Kamlanagar June 1/Borapansury June 2: The Chakma community in Mizoram has alleged that the Mizo student organisation (Mizo Zirlai Pawl) has been trying to grab prime land in Kamlanagar, headquarters of the Chakma Autonomous District Council. MZP has already encroached upon the said area and put up signboards illegally. The particular plot of land is under Borapansury Village Council  measuring 2500 sq. m and was given to the state Civil Supply Department for the civil supply purpose only. As per Land Rights rule in CADC (Sixth Schedule), if any department is given a plot of land, it is meant to be used for that purpose only and is non transferable. Moreover, no  outsider can buy land within the sixth schedule area. 



Sources said that repeated appeals made by the chakma community groups to the Mizoram Government have yielded no result. The Chief Executive Member (CEM) of CADC had communicated to the District Commissioner, Lawngtai District to remove the encroachment and illegal sign boards put up by MZP but no action was taken. The chakma community in Kamlanagar formed a Joint Action Committee (JAC) comprising of all political parties, NGO’s and the general public to resist the alleged land grab. The state government was served an ultimatum to remove the encroachment on or before 1st June 2014 (today), failing which the upcoming MDC by-election at Borapunsary- II will be boycotted. 

                    

Meanwhile, instead of addressing the issue, Home Minister allegedly sent a team of MZP cadres along with a news reporter at Borapansury at noon. The MZP cadres abused the Chakmas as foreigners (Mikhual in Mizo language) and asserted that they (MZP) can do and will do whatever they like, because it is their land. The community alleges that as per MZP’s assertion Mizos from Burma, Bangladesh or from any other country can come and settle in Mizoram. However Chakmas are 2nd class citizens and are like guests in Mizoram. The MZP team lead by Mr. Lalmachhuana has been alleged to have threatened bloodshed if the illegal occupation is removed and further threatened to motivate the entire Mizo community against the Chakma community. The DD News reporter and the Officer In-charge (Borapansury Police Station) were seen only jotting down the points of the MZP President. When some Chakma leaders reminded him that the chakmas are the most law abiding citizen of the Country and therefore would not remove the encroachment and therefore approached the authority for justice, the MZP president shot back by saying they (MZP) will do as they wish and have the support of the Government.
Chakma Voice urges the readers of the article to help the community in Mizoram against this illegal land grab. Readers are urged to call the Mizoram Chief Secretary at -0389 2322411/ 2322429 and Deputy Commissioner of Lawngtlai Dist at- 03835 323805 / 9862078140.
Urge them to take action and mention that people outside Mizoram are aware of this situation and their actions are being watched.

Note: This news was as published by  ARUNACHAL CHSKMA NEWS on June 1 and Chakma Voice pogodang, ARUNACHAL CHAKMA NEWS and seven sister project are marked as a source.