A delightful trip to honor a British colonial era revolutionary turned into a haunting nightmare for three young tribal women at Dighinala in Bangladesh’s Khagrachhari district last September.
Anti Chakma, Kornia Chakma and Nisa Chakma – all from predominantly Buddhist ethnic Chakma community were abducted on Sept. 23 as they were returning from a program held on the 91st death anniversary of Pritilata Waddedar.
Waddedar (1911-1932), a Hindu and prominent anti-British nationalist, committed suicide by swallowing cyanide while in police custody in Chattogram, a port city in southeast Bangladesh.
“The trip that could be an adventure for the young girls or get them initiated into a politically, conscious dignified life became a complete nightmare,” Anti Chakma told UCA News.
A leader of the women’s rights group, Hill Women’s Federation (HWF), Anti accompanied the girls aged 16 and 18, during the trip.
The abduction took place near Sajek Valley, a popular tourist spot in Rangamati district which is heavily guarded by the military.
The abductors took the three captives to an unknown location and held them up for 24 hours, Anti said.
The abductors kept interrogating the three about their political involvement, ordering them to leave politics as soon as released, she alleged.
The captives did not report the kidnapping to the police.
“Going to the police is of no use,” said Anti, recalling that abduction cases filed in the past were fruitless.
Such abductions and impunity are not uncommon in Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT), a mountainous and forested region comprised of three districts – Bandarban, Rangamati, and Khagrachhari bordered by Myanmar and India in southeast Bangladesh.
The abduction of Kalpana Chakma, a tribal rights activist, on June 12, 1996, allegedly by the security forces made national headlines. Nearly three decades on, no one knows what happened to her.
Tribal women on the hills are vulnerable to various forms of abuses including rape, and abductions amid a climate of fear fueled by armed rivalry between tribal political groups, sectarian conflicts, and lawlessness, rights groups say.
Bloodletting conflict in the CHT, home to dozens of ethnic tribal groups, has been prevalent for decades.
An armed tribal insurgency seeking greater autonomy for the region and counter-insurgency measures by the Bangladesh military left hundreds killed and thousands displaced until a peace accord was signed in 1997.
The insurgency erupted shortly after Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971 and a state-sponsored “population transfer” program started with an alleged aim of changing demography in the tribal-dominated region.
Five decades on, Muslims now outnumber tribals in the CHT, unofficial data shows.
Despite the peace treaty, the CHT remains a heavily militarized region where several armed insurgency groups regularly engage in deadly turf wars for supremacy.
While the tribal women face constant threats from armed groups and settler Bengali Muslims, the security forces are also accused of abusing tribal women.
“The military and other security forces are also a great threat to women’s existence in the hills,” alleged Rita Chakma, a tribal women activist.
In January of 2018, two ethnic Marma sisters, aged 17 and 14, were allegedly raped by military men at their home in Rangamati district, rights activists alleged.
The Marma girls were later forced to leave the hospital while undergoing treatment. The victims and their families remained silent thereafter.
Tribal activists allege that local and national media follow a “blackout policy” fearing a backlash when it comes to the involvement of security forces in the repression of ethnic minorities including women on the hills.
The situation poses risks for tribal women and girls who need to travel almost every day to faraway places to collect firewood from forests and water from springs.
“The repressors of ethnic minority women are mostly politically powerful men,” said Farha Tanzim Titil, who teaches economics at state-run Islamic University. “They consider ethnic minority women weaker than women of the mainstream society.”
In November, tribal girls in a primary school in Rangamati district stopped going to school alleging that they were frequently molested by a teacher in their school.
Violence against women and children is rife in the hills, says a report from Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), a major ethnic political organization.
In 2023, a total of 25 women and children were victims of abuse and harassment on the hills, said the report released on Jan. 4.
The attacks left one woman dead, 12 women and children raped, seven were subjected to attempted rape and two women were kidnapped, the report stated.
Last year, security forces were involved in 135 incidents of rights violations of ethnic minorities compared to 110 cases in 2022.
The United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF), another hill-based political organization, reported 23 women and children suffering from violence including sexual abuses in 2023 including 11 rapes, 9 attempted rapes, and one abduction.
The Chattogram Hill Tracts Affairs Ministry did not respond when asked about the allegations.
Tribal women from the plains remain equally vulnerable to abuses, often linked to land disputes with Bengali Muslims.
Tribal Oraon Bichitra Tirkey, now 38, was gang-raped when about two dozen men attacked her as she was working in her agricultural land in northern Dinajpur district on Aug. 4, 2014.
The brutal assault in broad daylight made national headlines, but the mother of three failed to get justice.
Tirkey, a former member of Parbatipur Union Council, a local government body, who is now a leader of National Adivasi Parishad, a tribal rights group, said she was denied justice from the court due to non-cooperation from police and local administration.
Police arrested 24 suspects, but they secured bail and walked out of jail within a month.
“My rapists and attackers roam freely in the area,” Tirkey told UCA News.
“They call out at me when they spot me in the local market or the field,” she alleged.
Though a police investigation found credible evidence of rape, the culprits were never identified or held accountable.
Tirkey said that such impunity encourages attackers to commit similar crimes against vulnerable women and girls.
She said she knows a 45-year-old tribal woman who was raped about six months ago by a drug abuser while she went alone to collect grass for the cattle from the fields.
Tirkey assisted the family in filing a case, but the police refused to take action.
“Now the rapist is pressuring us to withdraw the case,” she added.
Ethnic minority women cannot go out of their homes anymore, she lamented.
Various forms of marginality such as being a woman, poor, and a member of a religious minority exposed them to crimes, says Professor Mesbah Kamal of the History Department at Dhaka University.
“Rape and sexual harassment of women is the most effective weapon to establish control over them whether it is in the hills or the plains,” said Kamal, a rights campaigner.