Indigenous people's rights
Photo: Amirul Rajiv
The indigenous people of Bangladesh have been characterized as hard-core poor, marginalized, undeveloped, oppressed, illiterate, and vulnerable groups. The state and influential people are frequently evicting indigenous people from their lands through falsification of land documents, forcible occupation, fake court cases, and falsification during registration, and eviction from the Khas land in the name of eco-tourism park and social forestry. Surprisingly, most of the eco-parks like as Modhupur eco-park, Gajani Abkas, Alutila, Modhutila and Muroichori eco-park have been established in indigenous people concentrated areas. Moreover, the social forestry project of government has started encroaching traditional lands of indigenous people. The existence of indigenous people and their enriched culture, languages, traditional heritages, their own social values and spirituality and the total ways of life cannot be sustained without the entitlement and rights on land. These days the process of evicting indigenous people from their lands is continuing in the name of exploring oil, gas, coal and mineral resources, construction of dam, eco-tourism park as well as through forcible illegal occupation by the state and the land grabbers all around the country. Recently, the Khasia Punji in Lawachara National Park has been devastated by the fire that broke out due to a seismic survey conducted by an international oil company. As a result, there is huge effect on the livelihoods, diverse traditions and culture, change in species and availability of traditional food sources and substantial support for the survival of indigenous people in Bangladesh. More recently, the survey report revealed in a national workshop organised by Jatiya Adivasi Parishad at National Press Club on 10th May 2008 that around 1983 indigenous families in 10 districts of the country have so far lost their 1748 acres of ancestral land and particularly in Dinajpur alone the forest department has acquired around 1182 acres of land from 411 indigenous families. According to the customs and culture of indigenous people, the lands on which they have been living for a long time is their property. In this regard, having or not having land document is a minor point to them. Like other countries, the indigenous people in Bangladesh remain in very vulnerable situations because the state still does not recognise the indigenous peoples' customary rights and rights to those forests and the resources . Under this circumstance, the occupation of indigenous lands by the government and influential people is a violation of ILO Convention as well as Human Rights. The bottom line is that the government has to ensure the constitutional recognition of indigenous people and form a separate land commission to resolve their land problems as well as to ensure their land rights. Otherwise, they will live a vulnerable life, being homeless and landless.
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