Forced migration, land grabbing and ethnic conflict: Demographic and socio-economic transformation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. An interview with Dr Shapan Adnan

Abstract

In this video interview, recorded at the University of Edinburgh on 31^st May 2012, Dr Shapan Adnan, from the University of Oxford, explains how the complex processes of forced migration and land alienation transformed a polyethnic society subject to the imperatives of an assimilating nation-state, controlled by a dominant majority group.

The case study of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh - a remote and forested highland area along the country’s international border with India and Burma, inhabited by ‘tribal’ or indigenous peoples. Since the mid-twentieth century, the region has been subject to massive disruptions through large-scale submergence by a hydroelectricity project, counter-insurgency warfare against ‘tribal’ rebels, forced migration, and grabbing of indigenous lands by the state, settlers and commercial interest groups.

Even though a peace agreement was signed in 1997 between the state and the rebel forces, most of its substantive clauses, including restitution of illegally alienated lands, have not yet been implemented by the government. Paradoxically, instead of the ‘dividends of peace’, the disbanding of rebel forces has inadvertently served to facilitate continuing in-migration of settlers from the plains and intensification of land seizures. Shifts in ethnic composition includes processes of forced eviction of indigenous peoples and resultant flows of international refugees and internally displaced persons, as well as state-sponsored transmigration and self-propelled in-migration of settlers.

Such complex population displacements and transfers have resulted in drastic transformation of the socio-demographic structure of the CHT, reflected in striking changes in the composition of the population by ethnicity and religious affiliation, as well as associated changes in inter-ethnic social and political relationships.

Video running time: approx. 13 minutes.