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Original Articles

The Chittagong Hill Tracts: A case study in the political economy of 'creeping' genocide

Pages 339-369 | Published online: 25 Aug 2010

References

  • Anti-Slavery Society . 1984 . The Chittagong Hill Tracts, Militarisation, Oppression and the Hill Tribes , London : Anti-Slavery Society . For general background information on the CHT and the jumma, see
  • CHT Commission . 1991 . Life is not Ours'; Land And Human Rights in the CHT Bangladesh , Copenhagen and Amsterdam : Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission .
  • Timm , Father R W . 1991 . The Adivasis of Bangladesh , London : Minority Rights Group .
  • van Schendel , Willem . 1990 . “ 'The invention of the "jummas": state formation and ethnicity in southeastern Bangladesh' ” . Department of History, Rotterdam University . unpublished manuscript
  • 1984 . 'Genocide in Bangladesh' . Survival International Review , 43 : 7 – 35 .
  • Timm . Adivasis 28
  • The Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 69
  • Amnesty International . 1986 . Bangladesh: Unlawful Killings and Torture in the Chittagong Hill Tracts , London : Amnesty International .
  • Mey , Wolfgang . 1981 . 'Genocide in Bangladesh: the CHT case,' . paper presented at the 7th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies . July 7-11 1981 .
  • Rizvi , Gowher . 1988 . 'Bangladesh: Insurgency in the CHT,' . The Round Table , 305 : 39 – 44 .
  • Commission , CHT . Life is not Ours 57
  • Bangladeshi submission to the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, August 1985. Cited in Amnesty, Bangladesh, p. 11.
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 7 67
  • 1994 . Life in the Chittagong Hill Tracts , 1 Dhaka : Probe News Agency . which accuses the JSS of wanting to falsely inflate the number of jumma deaths for NGO or broader international consumption. The claim is also made in
  • Hafiz , Abdul M and Islam , Nahid . May 1993 . 'Environmental degradation and intra/interstate conflicts in Bangladesh' , Environment and Conflicts Project, (ENCOP), Occasional Paper No 6, Zurich May , 74 and in an unspecified government report forwarded by the Bangladeshi High Commissioner in London to the author, 14 August 1995. See FBTI-21.6 Refugees Studies Documentation Centre, Oxford, for the JSS reports themselves
  • Harff , Barbara and Gurr , Ted Robert . 1996 . “ 'Victims of the state: genocides, politicides and group repression from 1945 to 1995 ” . In Contemporary Genocides: Causes, Cases, Consequences , Edited by: Jongman , Albert J . 55 The Hague : PIOOM .
  • Harff and Gurr . 1988 . 'Towards empirical theories of genocides and politicides: identification and measurement of cases since 1945' . International Studies Quarterly , 32 (3) : 359 – 371 .
  • Fein , Helen . 1993 . 'Accounting for genocide after 1945: theories and some findings' . International Journal on Group Rights , 1 : 79 – 106 .
  • Ahmed , Ziauddin . “ 'The case of Bangladesh: bringing to trial the perpetrators of the 1971 genocide,' ” . In Contemporary Genocides Edited by: Jongman . 95 – 115 .
  • Timm . Adivasis 71 More generally
  • Sobhan , Rehman . 1982 . The Crisis of External Dependence, The Political Economy of Foreign Aid to Bangladesh , Dhaka and London : Zed Press .
  • Kuper , Leo . 1981 . Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century , New Haven , CT : Yale University Press . For major interpretations see
  • Wallimann , Isidor and Dobkowski , Michael , eds. 1987 . Genocide and the Modern Age , Westport , CT : Greenwood Press .
  • Charny , Israel W , ed. 1988 . Genocide; A Critical Bibliographical Review , London : Mansell .
  • Chalk , Frank and Jonassohn , Kurt . 1990 . The History and Sociology of Genocide , New Haven , CT : Yale University Press .
  • Fein , Helen . 1990 . 'Genocide; a sociological perspective' . Current Sociology , 38 (1) : 1 – 126 .
  • Andrepoulos , George D , ed. 1994 . Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions , Philadelphia , PA : University of Pennsylvania Press .
  • 1967 . Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion , London : Penguin . See, for instance, Norman Cohn's classic study
  • Smith , Roger W . 1990 . “ 'Fantasy, purity, destruction: Norman Cohn's complex witness to the Holocaust' ” . In Bearing Witness to the Holocaust 1939-1989, Lewiston , Edited by: Berger , Alan L . 116 – 123 . Queenston and Lampeter : Edward Mellen Press .
  • Levene , Mark . 1994 . 'Is the Holocaust simply another example of genocide?' . Patterns of Prejudice , 28 (2) : 10 emphasis added
  • Harff and Gurr . “ 'Towards empirical theory,' ” . 359
  • Lemkin , Raphael . 1944 . Axis Rule in Occupied Europe , 79 Washington DC : Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . (emphasis added)
  • Dadrian , Vahakn N . 1975 . “ 'The structural-functional components of genocide' ” . In Victimology: A New Focus , Edited by: Drapkin , Israel and Viano , Emilio . Vol IV , 123 Lexington , MA : Lexington Books .
  • Chalk and Jonassohn . History and Sociology 44 – 49 . For the text of the UN Convention see
  • Kuper, Genocide, p. 161.
  • Levene , Mark . 1999 . “ 'Connecting threads: Rwanda, the Holocaust and the pattern of contemporary genocide' ” . In Genocide: Essays Toward Understanding. Early Warning and Prevention , Edited by: Smith , Roger W . Williamsburg , VA : Association of Genocide Scholars . forthcoming ch 3, for a fuller rendition of this argument
  • Burger , Julian . 1987 . Report from the Frontier: The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples , 129 London : Zed Press .
  • Timm . Adivasis 10 – 11 .
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 85 – 88 . 31 appendix 6; and CHT Commission, Life is not Ours, 1994 update
  • Fein , Helen . 'Scenarios of genocide: models of genocide and critical responses' . Proceedings of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide . Boulder . Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide , Edited by: Charny , Israel W . pp. 4 – 5 . Westview Press .
  • Dadrian , Vahakn N . 1975 . 'A typology of genocide' . International Review of Modern Sociology , 5 (2) : 201 – 212 .
  • Hardiman , David . 1995 . The Coming of the Devi: Adivasi Assertion in Western India , Oxford : Oxford University Press . ch 1
  • Skaria , Ajay . 1997 . 'shades of wildness: tribe, caste and gender in western India' . Journal of Asian Studies , 56 (3) : 726 – 745 .
  • Bodley , John H . Palo Alto 1982 . Victims of Progress , Palo Alto , CA : Mayfieid . for further discussion of these themes
  • Schendel . “ 'Invention' ” . 9 – 10 .
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 88 – 89 .
  • Barta , Tony . “ 'Relations of genocide: land and lives in the colonization of Australia' ” . In Genocide Edited by: Wallimann and Dobkowski . 237 – 251 .
  • Harff and Gurr . “ 'Towards empirical theory,' ” . 363
  • Glaser , Kurt and Possony , Stefan T . 1979 . Victims of Politics: The State of Human Rights , New York : Columbia University Press . ch 27
  • Harff and Gurr . “ 'Towards empirical theory,' ” . 363
  • Hardiman . The Coming of the Devi 10 – 15 . 216 – 217 .
  • Cocker , Mark . 1998 . Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conflict with Tribal Peoples , 348 London : Jonathan Cape .
  • Hafiz and Islam . “ 'Environmental degradation' ” . 31 – 49 .
  • Nietschmann , Bernard . 1985 . 'Indonesia, Bangladesh: disguised invasions of indigenous nations, third world colonial expansion' . Fourth World Journal , 1 (2) : 96 – 97 .
  • Vidal , John . 1998 . 'Floods that have brought misery and mayhem to millions the world over' . Guardian , 19 September
  • Timm . Adivasis 8 Vidal, 'Floods'; and
  • Huq , M Mufazzalul . 1992 . 'Changing nature of dominant social forces and interventions in the CHT' . Journal of Social Studies (Dhaka) , 56 April : 71
  • Life in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, pp 12, 49.
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 26
  • Ganguli , Manan . 1995 . 'The Chittagong Hill Tracts: before and after Bangladesh' . Fourth Worm News (Cambridge) , December : 5 – 8 .
  • Mey . “ 'Genocide,' ” . 5
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 72 – 75 .
  • Schendel . “ 'Invention,' ” . 17 – 21 .
  • Burger . Report from the Frontier 130 for critical confirmation of these contentions
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 80 90
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 32 – 33 .
  • Bodley . Victims 8
  • Chakma , Mrinal Kanti . 1996 . “ 'Counter-insurgency: a multidimensional process of marginalisation of the CHT jummas' ” . 9 – 10 . Calcutta Research Group . unpublished paper; notes the importance of the land acquisition regulation specific to the CHT of 1958, which provided a definitive break with the region's 'special status'
  • Timm . Adivasis 9
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 57 quoting Sheik Mujibur Rahman
  • Gadgil , Madhav and Guha , Ramachandra . 1992 . This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India , 116 – 134 . 150 – 153 . Delhi : Oxford University Press .
  • Bodley . Victims 8 This contradicts the usual Bangladeshi refrain that the greatest threat to the sustainability of the forest come from jhum itself. See for example
  • Hafiz and Islam . “ 'Environmental degradation' ” . 20
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 71 – 86 .
  • Life in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, pp 50-51.
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 84 – 85 .
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 75
  • Schendel . “ 'Invention' ” . 10
  • Roy , Raja Devasish . 1996 . 'Forests, forestry and indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts' . Earth Touch , February : 40 for his comments on the attitudes of government officials
  • Kukreja , Veena . 1991 . Civil-Military Relations in South Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India , New Delhi : Sage . ch 4, 'Militarism in Bangladesh'
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 81
  • Kukreja . Civil-Military Relations 140
  • Kukreja . Civil-Military Relations 164
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 81 85 Two specific examples of this with regard to the CHT were the way the state, despite supposedly strict controls protecting its own monopoly, dispensed direct land grants for large-scale rubber plantations and provided licences and permits for commercial logging
  • Kukreja . Civil-Military Relations 154 – 156 .
  • Mey . “ 'Genocide' ” . 11 ibid, p. 41; , for fuller details on the composition of BDF forces in the CHT
  • 23-26 February 1997 . “ 'An invitation to International Peace Conference on Chittagong Hill Tracts: working towards peace' ” . 23-26 February , 9 Bangkok unpublished report
  • Burger . Report from the Frontier 256
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 32
  • Kinross , Lord . 1964 . Ataturk: Rebirth of a Nation , London : Weidenfeld and Nicholson . for a classic enunciation
  • CUT Commission . Life is not Ours 42 So much so that counter-insurgency courses at the Defence Staff college, Dhaka, were taught by seconded members of the British military and included students from abroad while the CHT itself was on the regular itinerary of invited foreign officers
  • Chomsky , Noam . 1985 . Turning the Tide: US Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace Boston , MA For the broader picture, see
  • Chomsky . 1992 . Deterring Democracy , London : Vintage .
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 38 – 41 .
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 84
  • Nietschmann . “ 'Indonesia, Bangladesh' ” . 108 notes that incoming Bengalis were to receive 2.5 to five acres of land and six months food supply, which proved inadequate to meet their start-up needs
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 16
  • Paine , Robert . 1985 . “ 'The claim of the Fourth World,' ” . In Native Power, The Quest for Autonomy and Nationhood of Indigenous Peoples , Edited by: Brosted , Jens . 49 – 66 . Oslo : Universitetsflorlaget AS . for this argument
  • Schendel . “ 'Invention' ” . 13
  • Smith , Roger W . 1994 . 'Women and genocide: notes on an unwritten history' . Holocaust and Genocide Studies , 8 (3) : 315 – 334 . Sexual humiliation and degradation of women, especially in the wake of 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia, is now well recognised as a major, consciously applied instrument in such 'softening up' processes
  • Stiglmayer , Alexandra , ed. 1994 . Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina , London : University of Nebraska Press .
  • CUT Commission . Life is not Ours 106 – 109 . For its specific application and other gender-related crimes in the CHT see
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 67
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 58 For more general confirmation of this point with regard to other third world state versus community struggles see
  • Maybury-Lewis , David . 1984 . “ 'Living in Leviathan: ethnic groups and the state,' ” . In The Prospects for Plural Societies , Edited by: Maybury-Lewis . 224 – 225 . Washington, DC : The American Ethnological Society .
  • CUT Commission . Life is not Ours 14
  • For development of this theme see chapters by LeoKuper, Peter Worsley and Maybury-Lewis in Maybury-Lewis, The Prospects for Plural Societies.
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 44 – 54 .
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 16 103 – 106 . for jumma political developments
  • Mey . “ 'Genocide' ” . 15 also notes the Shanti Bahini's links with the non-tribal and outlawed Marxist-Leninst Sarbohara Party
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 84
  • Mey . “ 'Genocide' ” . 9
  • Murtaza , Ali . 1994 . 'CHT: tracking the past' . Dhaka Courier , 18 November
  • Anderson , Benedict . 1983 . Imagined Communities , London : Verso . for the general argument
  • Schendel . “ 'Invention' ” . 26 – 31 . for its application to the jumma
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 60 The Shanti Bahini claimed between 12 000 and 15 000 jumma were detained without trial in 1979-1980
  • For details of the Kaokhali and subsequent massacres see ibid, pp 55-66
  • CUT Commission . Life is not Ours 17 – 19 . 21 – 23 .
  • Amnesty . Bangladesh 10 – 30 . and Survival International, Genocide
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 64 Additionally, the JSS claimed that a further 10 000 people, mostly children, had died as an indirect result of the massacres, either in flight, or through neglect and trauma in the Tripura camps
  • 1988 . Survival International News , 20
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 20 – 21 . for Ershad's amnesty policy
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 22 See the conclusions of ibid p. 34; and Survival International News, 13, 1986 report 534 separate incidents of rape and torture in the period February-December 1985 alone
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 24 74 – 75 .
  • Hafiz and Islam . “ 'Environmental degradation' ” . 67
  • Jumma Peoples Alliance, Special Issue 2, unpublished, document, 25 October 1997.
  • Ibid; and CHT Commission, Life is not Ours, 1992 update, p. 7.
  • 1992 . Survival Action Bulletin , May noted that 1200 people were burnt alive in their homes in the Logang massacre. See also Survival Action Bulletin, January 1994 for reports on the massacres at Mallya (February 1992), and Naniarchar (November 1993)
  • CHT Commission . 1994 . Life is not Ours 36 20
  • Survival International . 18-27 October 1992 . “ 'Chittagong Hill Tracts revisited' ” . 18-27 October , unpublished field trip report
  • Mey . “ 'Genocide' ” . 15 on the Tiger Force. Government efforts to utilise the smaller tribes against the Chakma, who constitute 60 of the jumma, deserve further attention. Within the Chakma itself there are also exploitable antipathies; for instance, notes that the Taungchengya clans have their own separate guerrilla force which has at times fought the Shanti Bahini. The latter also has poor relations with the tribally based Mizo National Front over the Indian border in Mizoram
  • Amnesty Urgent Action bulletin . 1996 . 'Fear for Safety' . Index ASA , 13 July
  • 1997 . 'Kalpana Chakma remains untraced' . Earth Touch , February : 21 – 22 .
  • Goldenberg , Suzanne . 1996 . 'Immigrants bear brunt of Assam's culture of mutiny . Guardian , 17 April
  • Nietschmann . “ 'Indonesia, Bangladesh' ” . 96 – 97 . More generally, See
  • Homer-Dixon , Thomas Fraser . 1991 . 'On the threshold: environmental changes as causes of acute conflict' . International Security , Fall : 76 – 116 .
  • Rubenstein , Richard L . 1983 . The Age of Triage, Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World , Boston , MA : Beacon Press .
  • McGirk , Tim . 1994 . 'Fear-filled return home for exiles' . Independent , 25 February
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 27
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 24
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 27 – 28 .
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 83 – 84 .
  • Huq . “ 'Changing nature' ” . 82 An additional complicating variable in this demographic picture is the 100 000 Rohingyas, the Burmese Moslem refugees expelled from Buddhist Burma who have fled into an area adjacent to the CHT. CHT Commission, Life is not Ours, 1994 update, pp 8, 29, has questioned whether the Bangladeshi government might use these refugees against the jumma
  • Anti-Slavery Society . Chittagong Hill Tracts 87
  • CHT Commission . Life is not Ours 91 – 92 . notes government sponsorship of ethnography, weaving and dance. For the issue more generally
  • Monbiot , George . 1998 . 'Tourist trap' . Guardian , 12 December
  • Regional Council . 1996 . Jana Samhati Samiti , 15 October See Charter of modified five point demands and a brief outline of Regional Autonomy with a
  • Goldenberg , Suzanne . 1996 . 'Rivalry and corruption cripple the self-help economy' . Guardian , 17 February
  • 1992 . Bangladesh Times , 31 December See statement of Colonel (retd) Oil Ahmed, the Communications Minister and President of the government created special committee on the CHT with responsibilty for talks with the JSS
  • 1995 . 'Two foreign firms to explore oil in CHT' . Dhaka Observer , 31 July
  • JSS . 28 October 1995 . “ 'Situation in CHT' ” . 28 October , unpublished report
  • Survival International archive , London : The TNCS in question are Shell, Amoco and BHP .
  • Aronson , Ronald . 1983 . The Dialectics of Disaster, A Preface to Hope , London : Verso . for the relationship between genocide and state efforts to 'realise the unrealisable'

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