Editorial
Evicted indigenous families
They should get back their homesteads
TO satisfy commercial appetite of land robbers, indigenous Chak community is being systematically evicted from its ancestral abode at Naikhangchhari upazila in Bandarban. The ostensible purpose is to appropriate the land for rubber plantation.
No law permits arbitrary expulsion of any people from their ancestral lands. The Chak community have the rights to their habitats like any citizen of the country.
This is thoroughly unacceptable that the police did not take any action because no formal complaint was lodged with them.
The hapless people fled their homes because of continuous intimidation, occasional forays into their homesteads by armed muggers and threats to their lives. This has been going on over the past many years.
Under the circumstances, they dared not lodge official complaint for fear of their lives, a fact that the police could not have failed to notice.
Actually, the police should have of their own volition taken note of the incidents and extended their protection to them.
Quite clearly, these evicted people are not in a position to return to their homes without a protective umbrella spread over them by the local administration.
Protection of indigenous people is a sacred trust of the government. So, the administration from the highest level should investigate the matter, punish the offenders in an exemplary manner and take urgent steps to return the homesteads to the evicted indigenous families.
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