Bengali settlers

Muslim-Bengali settlers in the Chittagong hill Tracts are the outcome of the ethnic cleansing policy of the Bangladesh government. Mass population transfer into the CHT started during the office of late president Zaur Rahaman, the founder of Bangladesh nationalist Party (BNP) as part counter-insurgency against the Jumma people. Thousands of Jumma people had been killed became landless within two and a half decades because of this cruel government program.

The Bengali settlers are land less Bengali speaking Muslims from the plain land districts of Bangladesh, majority are from Chittagong, Noakhali, Comilla, Sylhet districts. The Bangladesh Government and the Military lured the poor Bengali families with money and promise of empty land in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The real motive was to outnumber the Jummas in the CHT and evict them from their traditional land. Some 500,000 plain settlers were brought to the CHT through state-sponsored population transfer between 1978 and 1983. Since 1978, the Bangladesh government has been providing free rations to about 28,000 Muslim settler families.

Bengali Muslims settlers had been settled in Land belonged to indigenous Jumma people mostly in Rangamati and Khagrachari district of Chittagong Hill Tracts(CHT). This policy of the successive Bangladesh government extremely complicated the human rights situation of the Jumma people for Bengali Muslim settlers had always been involved in direct acts of human rights abuses such as mass killing , arson of Jumma village, occupation of Jummmas land, rape of Jumma women destroying Buddhist temple in collaboration with Bangladesh militaries. They are protected by Bangladesh militaries and also used as human shield of militaries. The Muslim Bengali settlers in Chittagong hill tracts already out numbered the Jumma population for the government policy remained unchanged.