Bangladesh Rebel Group at CHT Proposes Peace Talks

[Black_cats]

Bangladesh Rebel Group Proposes Peace Talks​

June 14, 2022 0:00 AM

• Agence France-Presse

Bangladeshi pirates lay down their weapons to Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, center, as they surrender, in Cox's Bazar on Nov. 23, 2019.

A rebel group in Bangladesh has offered to hold peace talks, officials said Monday, raising hopes for an end to 25 years of violence that has killed hundreds of people.

In 1997, the main rebel outfit in the restive Chittagong Hill Tracts region in southeast Bangladesh, the Jana Samhati Samiti, signed a peace deal and laid down its arms.

But the United People's Democratic Front, a splinter group of younger rebels in the mainly Buddhist region that is home to several ethnic tribal groups, rejected the agreement.

The deal failed to address key issues such as autonomy for the region and the presence of thousands of government troops and Bengali settlers, the UPDF said.

Since then, a turf war between the JSS and UPDF has left hundreds of people dead, including senior UPDF figures and a small number of Bangladeshi soldiers.

According to local newspapers, nearly 60 people have been killed in clashes in the region bordering Myanmar and northeast India since late last year.

Following several years of back-channel talks, last week the UPDF submitted a formal proposal for peace talks with a former army major, Emdadul Islam, a key architect of the 1997 agreement.

Islam called the move a "significant development."

"We will now take the UPDF proposals to the government. We hope we can sign another landmark deal which will secure peace and development in the CHT," Islam told AFP.

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said the government had yet to receive the formal proposal.

"We always want peace. We are doing everything we can to keep peace. We welcome if they come to peace talks," Khan told AFP.

Bangladesh Rebel Group Proposes Peace Talks

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[Bilal9]

Well I guess the threats by the army brass worked.

These people are wise to lay down their arms.

Live and fight another way - another day. But not today.

 

[fallstuff]

Never heard of these people ! Who are they ?

 

[Bilal9]

Never heard of these people ! Who are they ?

United People's Democratic Front - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Bunch of Chakma idiot extremists. All this AL sweet talk about secularism to please westerners has emboldened these thugs to no end.

They claim that the Hill Tracts is Chakma territory, when in actuality the "Zum" method of slash and burn cultivation they practice - ensures they constantly move around like nomads and can claim no ancestry to any land in Bangladesh. They moved in from Myanmar about a few hundred years ago because the hill tracts were virgin territory.

These people receive money and arms from RAW and have constantly threatened peace in the area. They also extort money from poor ethnicities other than their own. A lot of Chakmas live in Nagaland and Manipur and those people finance these UPDF thugs.

Now that we gave Chakmas, Tenchangyas and other tribals quota-enabled education and jobs (and comfortable jobs in the city with it), they have become too big for their own breeches. Ingrates.

These f*ckers are even complaining about Bengali settlers in the hill tracts, when this is not their own land to begin with. They will take advantage of secularism fine, but being unpolished uncultured savages, they aren't accepting of non-tribal Bengalis and do not accept a multicultural Bangladesh. Same deal like their uncultured tree-dwelling extremist cousins in Nagaland and Manipur. We can Thank the Ahom-speaking backward tribes who injected this anti-Bengali hate among the other tribals.

In Ershad's time there was a concerted effort to settle poorer Bengali folks in these Hill tract areas, that should be started anew. Ethnic intermarriages should also be encouraged. That is the only way to drive away these UPDF extremists.