Violence escalates in Bangladesh’s Hill Tracts as locals lynch second settler in weeks

Violence erupted again in Bangladesh’s restive Chittagong Hill Tracts region on Tuesday after members of an indigenous community lynched a settler for allegedly raping a local student, in the second such killing in under two weeks.

Authorities banned public gatherings in the Khagrachhari Sadar sub-district after at least 12 people were injured in clashes between members of the indigenous and settler communities following the lynching.

The official in charge at the Khagrachhari police station, Abdul Baten Mridha, said that he and some administration officials were also injured in the melee after they rushed to the area to try to stem the violence.

“We are trying our best to tackle the tense situation,” he said.

Officials identified the lynching victim, who was beaten to death, as Abul Hasnat Mohammad Sohel Rana, a teacher at the Khagrachhari Government Technical School and College. He was accused of raping an indigenous seventh-grade student.

Police official Abdul Baten said the badly beaten teacher was taken to a local hospital, where doctors declared him dead on arrival.

Police and witnesses said that as news about the alleged assault spread via social media, the people who began assembling outside the school grew into an angry mob. The student had allegedly been raped inside a room in the institution.

A social media post showed an angry mob armed with sticks beating a person, supposedly the teacher, inside the school.

Sohel, the teacher, was allegedly a repeat offender. He had been imprisoned in February 2021 for attempting to rape a student while teaching at the same institution, but was freed three months ago after the case against him was reportedly withdrawn.

Upon being freed, Sohel had rejoined the same institution, officials said. 

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The sparsely populated but volatile Chittagong Hill Tracts, a region in southeastern Bangladesh along the borders with Myanmar and India, is a heavily militarized zone. It consists of three districts – Rangamati, Khagrachari, and Bandarban – where the indigenous community’s tribes claim to be from.

During an insurgency in the 1980s by the indigenous people against the central government, the administration sent more than 400,000 settlers and about a third of the total Bangladeshi military at that time to the Hill Tract area, for so-called counter-insurgency measures, according to Forced Migration Review, a think-tank focused on displacement.

Eventually, the insurgents and the federal government signed a peace treaty in 1997. However, that treaty’s provisions were never fulfilled by the federal government. And the settlers remain.

Violence ‘may worsen’

Tensions were already rife in the area after a total of four people were killed in clashes over two days, on Sept. 21 and 22. 

Just as it happened on Tuesday, settlers and the indigenous people fought after a settler accused of having stolen a motorcycle was lynched by a mob made up mostly of the ethnic minority locals.

Sujan Chandra Roy, the official who heads Khagrachhari Sadar, which is part of Khagrachchari district, said the local administration feared a fresh spell of violence between the settlers and the hill people.

“Currently, we see a face-off between two feuding groups. The situation may worsen,” Roy told BenarNews. 

“To avert further deterioration of law and order, we have slapped section 144. According to the imposition of section 144, all forms of protest, rally and assembly are prohibited. This section will remain in force until further order,” he said.

“At the same time, the joint patrol of the army and the police has been intensified in the whole district,” said Roy. 

A security analyst, retired Maj. Emdadul Islam, believes that some elements were instigating violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. They were exploiting the lax law and order situation in the country following the Aug. 5 resignation of Sheikh Hasina as prime minister, he said.

Since Hasina resigned and fled the country, a large section of members of the police force nationwide has stayed away from duty. They fear retribution because their members were among those who instigated the violence that killed more than 800 people in the student and mass protests that began mid-July.

“The trouble in the hill region must be settled through amity, not through force. Different vested groups have been working to provoke violence,” he told BenarNews.

“There is no improvement in the situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts after the change of government. Rather, we see a plot to make the situation worse.”