Tanaya Dewan:
(Translated by Tinni Rahman)
Dear indigenous brothers, can’t you ensure safety to your settler brothers (!!!) Don’t you know if by any chance one settler dies, 3/4 indigenous people also die with them? Don’t you know brother, the pain of being burnt, losing home along with everything else? Still then why my indigenous brothers can’t ensure safety to the settler brothers? Why? Indigenous people have to escape in groups because you can’t protect the settlers. Indigenous people don’t need to be protected. Please do protect the settlers, so they do not die, so they can live forever, if possible receive immortality.
It doesn’t matter to anybody if a few indigenous people die and left on the street to rot. Nothing happens in that case. But if a settler dies, then it matters a lot. Don’t you see, what happened when only oneNayan settler died? Did it happen only this time? Did you forget the past? Don’t you remember how many times this happened? It happened as many times as any settler died.
And the death of indigenous people, burning their houses is not news. Does anyone care about that? We came to die; if we had came to live then there would be something like human rights!
Oh…. human rights? Human + rights? Settlers don’t believe we are human, that is why they are making us live under the sky, (they think indigenous people are another kind of animal, so they can be slaughtered).
And rights, they don’t have any, and that is why they have to loose their own houses, loose land, and be silent even after seeing someone is putting fire on their houses, may be because they also don’t have right on their own body, indigenous women are being raped by the settlers.
Dear brother, did you ever hear of any settler woman being raped by an indigenous man? Or did you ever hear of any incident where indigenous people in groups burnt the houses of settlers?
How would you hear that brother, they neither have that physical strength nor mental strength, how would they do anything of that sort? These are usually done by the people called settlers, isn’t it?
In Bangla movies, we see villains laughing for three hours and the hero and the good people around him laugh for two minuets at the end, which means after that they don’t have any sorrow, only happiness surround them which is not shown obviously. It was ok if it was same with the indigenous people, but for them it doesn’t end, one chapter comes after another chapter….as if the chapters are never ending….!
My dear indigenous brothers, are you waiting for the law enforcement people? Brother, they are big fishes, so it takes a while for them to arrive, but by then everything is destroyed.
So dear brother, come let you and I together ensure safety to settlers, so they don’t die, because if they die, they will kill us too, attack us, burn our houses, rape us.
In this topic, it is quite strange to look at the organizations that came with a promise to develop Chittagong hill tracts. When the people of the hill tracts cry, where do their slogans of development go?
It is not that you loved only the treasures of the hills, but not the hills?
I am talking to you, if you really want development then please love the land and the people of the hills. I can guaranty that what you do for the land and people of the hills, they will return a lot more than what you gave.
I hope, one day the stream of cries of the hills will transform into laughter of the people of the hills, you and I might not be there then, but our future generations will be there.
The original article in Bengali was published on June 3, 2017.
Link:
Tanaya Dewan completed her BBA and MBA in Finance. She hails from Rangamati, Bangladesh.
Tinni Rahman is a design professional . A multi-talented individual, her passions include travelling and learning new languages. She speaks 5 languages and traveled extensively across Asia and Europe.
Note:
- http://www.theindependentbd.com/post/97631
- https://www.amnesty.org.uk/groups/wirksworth-and-district/hidden-bangladesh-violence-and-brutality-chittagong-hill-tracts