Chakmas to PM: Help stop attacks on ethnic minorities in Bangladesh

AIZAWL: Thirteen Chakma organisations in Mizoram, including political parties, sent a memorandum to PM Narendra Modi Sunday, urging his intervention to halt attacks on indigenous ethnic minorities in Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh . Chakmas share ties of ethnicity and kinship with such groups in the neighbouring country.

The organisations alleged at least nine people were killed, many wounded and hundreds left homeless following attacks by illegal settlers backed by army personnel on Sept 19. According to the memorandum, the attacks came in the wake of Bangladesh interim govt's decision to grant magisterial and policing powers to the army.

The attacks were reportedly a response to a peaceful "March for Identity" held on Sept 18 in CHT, during which 40,000 indigenous people called for constitutional recognition of their rights and full implementation of a 1997 peace accord. The memorandum cited demographic changes due to settlement of five lakh illegal Muslims between 1979 and 1983, which left indigenous population marginalised. It drew attention to historical injustices suffered by non-Muslim minorities in the region since Partition.