Thank you, Chairperson.
Honourable Chair of the subcommittee, vice-chairs, members of the committee, and all the people who are present here, I will be very brief. I also submitted my brief, three or four days ago, and I hope you already have a copy.
First of all, briefly, I want to introduce myself. My name is Aditya Kumar Dewan. I am a professor of anthropology at Concordia University. Also, I did my Ph.D. at McGill, and during that period my professor was Doctor Cotler here, and from the Governor General I received my doctorate degree at convocation at McGill in 1990. I am fortunate to have met these two distinguished personalities in Canada. Since then, I have been teaching at Concordia University.
The main reason for my presence here is the International Council for the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. This is the organization that represents all overseas indigenous peoples throughout the world: in Australia, in America, here, and in other places. I am the president of that organization.
The reason I have organized and founded this organization is to do a human rights campaign for the Chittagong Hill Tracts indigenous people. There have been constant human rights violations in the area since Bangladesh independence. We know that there have been countless human rights violations taking place. Anyone can check with Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. They have all the reports.
I also got today the report of February 18 from Amnesty International. They have come out with a damning report about the silencing of the indigenous people. The Ministry of Home Affairs sent a memo saying that indigenous people will not be allowed to talk to foreigners. Foreigners are banned from entering into the CHT. Not only foreigners, but Bangladeshi individuals and organizations are not allowed to enter without permission from the army and the military.
There is well-documented evidence of the actions of looting and the frequent attacks on indigenous people. Every year we see two or three attacks committed by the army and the Bengali settlers. That's what led us to organize a campaign appealing to the foreign governments to stop this. How can we stop these countless and enormous human rights violations from taking place? All sorts of violations are taking place. I will not list all of them.
Our main purpose is to let you know what is happening there. I will use one phrase: we are born free but are everywhere in chains. That's what Rousseau said during the French Revolution. That's what you can compare this to: we are not allowed or able to freely move in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
Personally, I have two incidents I want to tell you about today. One of them is the Bhusanchara massacre. My village was completely taken over and 400 people were killed. It is still under occupation by the Bengali settlers. Another one happened in 1980. That was the Kaukhali massacre. The army convened a meeting in the temple, and when the people got together, they gunned down 400 people. My sister's family and other villagers were gunned down. After gunning them down, the settlers moved in, setting fires, burning, and looting. Everything went on. These are two of the serious incidents. I am not going to tell you about any other kinds of things.
I don't have time to list all of them, but just briefly, one of them is denial of the ethnic identity of indigenous people. The Bangladesh government says that we don't have any indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Of course, when we went to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Bangladesh authorities sent a representative saying that the forum had no business saying that there were indigenous people in Bangladesh. I also want to mention that when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to the United Nations to address some of the nations, Ban Ki-moon asked her what was happening to her indigenous people. Her answer was, “No, we don't have any indigenous people: we are the indigenous people.” To that Ban Ki-moon laughed and made a joke: “It's very good that we have indigenous people like you in the United Nations.”
That's one thing. Since then, we have been doing all kinds of lobbying in other places.
As well, the army has created many armed groups among the indigenous people. They are fighting among themselves. The army does not arrest them or take them to court. The army and the settlers have complete impunity for what they are doing. A culture of impunity has developed. They are not answering to anyone else. Chittagong Hill Tracts is completely under occupation, just like any other place being occupied by an army.
Why is this happening? This is peacetime. We are not doing anything. We are not protesting. Nothing is being done there. So why is there so much secrecy? Is it that they want to hide crimes by not allowing foreigners to listen? One possibility is that if they do anything wrong, probably it will get out, and the Bangladesh government is very much afraid of publicity. At the same time, they are afraid of having problems with their foreign aid.
A possible reason for so much secrecy, for outside people not being allowed to go in there, is that there might be some training of Islamic terrorists. Chittagong Hill Tracts is one of the mountainous regions; it's very hilly and mountainous. There are rumours—I don't have the proof—that there might be some training, because people are coming from Burma, from the Rohingya situation, and there are other groups. Money is pouring in from the Middle East. An increasing number of madrasahs, religious schools, have been established. When any riots occur or any incidents happen, they hire people from outside the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and pay them as hired goons.
Basically, I should call this essay “Genocide Bangladesh Style”. That means it's not just like Rwanda or Bosnia in terms of the kind of killing going on. It's the slow demise of the indigenous people, the taking over of our land, so that people outside don't know anything. The army is very much protecting themselves this way. We went to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations. They hired 10,000 Bangladesh army in the peacekeeping force at the United Nations. We told them that your people, the Bangladesh peacekeepers, when they come back, violate human rights in the area—raping, killing, and everything.
This brings me to intention. Honourable members all know that the United Nations definition of genocide in article II is that it's any deliberate attempt to kill, with an intent to destroy in whole or in part.
This is exactly what is happening. Intentionally, they are trying to completely bury all these human rights violations. At the same time, there was a peace agreement signed on December 2, 1997. In the 17 years that have passed, the government has not even implemented the peace agreed upon between the government and the insurgents in 1997. Sixty thousand refugees from India have been repatriated and still have not been given back their lands that are occupied by the settlers, the Bengali people.
Most probably I am out of time. I'll give answers if you have questions. Thank you very much. I am so fortunate that I have been able to come here and tell my stories of what is happening there. In 1984 I sought refugee status in Canada. The Canadian government gave me refuge here. I was not able to go back because I did my doctoral thesis at McGill on the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
My conclusion, my recommendation, is as I've said. The Canadian government provides a large amount of foreign aid to Bangladesh. I'm not saying that you use that aid as a weapon or as tied aid, but I'm saying that if you want to develop and promote human rights and democracy in a developing country like Bangladesh, it has to go with this, side by side, this integrating and respecting of the rights of religious minorities everywhere. The Canadian government can have much power to influence the Bangladesh government. Bangladesh is a sovereign country. They will argue this, but you have enough room to promote democracy and human rights in the areas where you provide foreign aid.
Basically, I give thanks to all of you here. I'm so fortunate that I was able to do this. We are a small number of people. We are unable to reach people and are unable to send news to the outside. In Bangladesh, if a ferry capsizes or if there's a snakebite, it gets attention from the major news media, but something's going on there that has never come up in the major news media, on the CBC, CTV, or whatever. We are completely blacked out because the Bangladesh government has so many tools of influence in many areas. But we are unable to do that.
Again, I thank all of you. I will end my statement here.
Thank you very much.