CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS
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1. ABOLITION OF CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS ACT 1900
The abolition of special status in 1964 opened up the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) to outsiders. Bengali Muslim families started settling there in numbers large enough to alarm the Jummas, who felt that it was official government policy to outnumber them on their own land. Grounds for this fear could be seen in the industries like Kaptai hydroelectric power station, Chandraghona paper mill whose founding in the CHT coincided with the influx of Bengali Muslims who were given preferential employment.
2. SECRET MEETING
Eight years after the independence of Bangladesh, President Ziaur Rahman presided at a secret, mid 1979 meeting during which it was decided to settle 30,000 Bangladeshi families during the following year. The importance of the meeting was emphasized by the attendance of Deputy Prime Minister Jamaluddin, Home Minister Mustafizur Rahman, the commissioner of the Chittagong division and the deputy commissioner of the CHT. A sum of Taka 60 million was allocated to the scheme, but the budget heading under which this state money was provided was not disclosed. As a result of the meeting, implementation committees, made up of government officers and leading Bangladeshi settlers, were formed at district and sub divisional levels. The district commissioner headed the district committee and sub divisional officers the sub divisional committees. The committees appointed agents from among the Bangladeshi settlers and assigned them to contact land less Bangladeshis willing to settle in the CHT. These were not hard to find and from ebruary 1980 truckloads of poor Bangladeshi families poured into the CHT attracted by the government scheme to provide five acres of land, Taka 3,600 to each new settler family. According to USAID in July 1980, the government decided to resettle 100,000 Bangladeshis from the plains in the CHT in the first phase of this scheme.
3. GOVERNMENT SPONSOR MIGRATION
From the government's viewpoint the settlement plan was successful from the start. By 1980 the Feni valley which borders on Tripura contained about 18,000 Bangladeshi families and roughly 1,500 Jumma families. There are now even fewer Jumma people left and those who remain are eager to leave. Myani valley in the northern part of the CHT contains 40,000 indigenous people and about 10,000 Bangladeshis, a large number of whom arrived in the valley in 1980. In Chengi valley the Bangladeshi settlements received 1,500 families between1978 and 1980. By the same date there were 1,000 Bangladeshi families at Kaptai and 5,000 families in Rangamati sub-division of which 3,500 families alone settled at Kalampati. In the southern part of the CHT, the Lama <i>thana</i> had about 3,000 Bangladeshi families and even more were settled at Nakyangchari. In Rangamati town, in 1980, the Jummas were accounted for about 30 per cent of the population. The Bangladesh Government initially denied its settlement program, however in May 1980 the government confirmed its policy towards the Chittagong Hill Tracts and started actively to encourage settlers to move there. A secret memorandum from the commissioner of the Chittagong Division to government officials in other districts stated that it was "the desire of the government that the concerned deputy commissioners will give top priority to this work and make the program a success". During 1980 some 25,000 Bangladeshi families were settled in the CHT. At the same time thousands of Jumma families, dispossessed by the Kaptai dam project in the early 1960s, were still attempting to get some kind of monetary or land compensation. Under the second phase of the plan each land less settler family received five acres of hill land or four acres of mixed land or 2.5 acres of wet rice land. They also received two initial grants of Taka 700 altogether, followed by Taka 200 per month for five months and 24 lb. of wheat per week for six months. In July 1982 a third phase of Bangladeshi settlement was authorized under which a further 250,000 Bangladeshis were transferred to the area.
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