Demanding Justice in the Chittagong Hill Tracts Now an “Anti-State Activity.”

In the event Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, demanding justice for rape seems to have become an anti-state act. Indigenous youth, with folded hands, pleaded with the police and army to allow their peaceful protest demanding justice for a rape case but were denied permission yesterday.

During Biju, the largest Indigenous festival in the Hills, a Marma teenage girl was raped. Outside the hospital, members of the Marma community were celebrating the traditional Jalkheli (water play festival). Meanwhile, the raped teenager lay in agony inside the hospital, physically brutalized, her entire body covered in injuries.

This horrifying incident took place in Kaukhali, Rangamati district. When a protest was organized in Rangamati town demanding justice for her, the administration intervened and blocked it.

Hours later, a peaceful protest took place in Khagrachhari, another district town. The demonstration had no aggression, just banners and slogans. Even there, authorities moved in to stop the students.

Though the protests were about a specific rape case, they raised far deeper questions. This wasn’t just about one crime, and it exposed the state’s real view of the Indigenous people of the Hills.

It is imperative to question the state’s role and mindset here.

A state that considers demands for justice in the Hills a “threat” was just recently facilitating a “March for Gaza” event in Khagrachhari organized by Bengali Muslims with no restrictions, no need for permission, and no police interference.

Gaza is thousands of miles away from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. People can march for Gaza. But within their own country, Indigenous people cannot ask for justice for a raped Indigenous girl.

This contradiction is not just painful. It is colonial in character. When the colonizer decides which suffering is legitimate and which must be silenced, justice dies in the margins.

This stark double standard once again makes it painfully clear to the people of the Hills that they still do not enjoy full citizenship.

In the photo, a student is seen pleading with folded hands, begging the authorities not to stop their protest. The image is heartbreaking. At the same time, it raises serious questions about the state’s morality and the character of its administration.

In a democratic country, if seeking justice becomes a matter of begging, then democracy ceases to exist. What replaces it is a security-controlled zone, where the administration serves someone else’s interests, not the people.

The people of the Hills have long asked: “Is the law of this country equal for all?”

When a settler is attacked in the Hills, the police register a case immediately, make arrests, and file chargesheets without delay. But when an Indigenous woman is raped, the state remains silent. And when someone protests, they face obstruction instead.

So, is the law meant only for the majority, and justice a luxury for minorities?

In other countries, when women are raped and civilians are killed by terrorist forces like Hamas, the entire nation can demand justice. But in Chittagong Hill Tracts, the same demand is labeled seditious. How can these two responses coexist in a world that claims to uphold universal human rights?

These same students had shaken the entire nation last July. Their movement proved that if the youth united, even a regime could fall, and the government of Hasian fell.

Now, the very act of protest by these students is being suppressed in the Hills. This reality reminds us again: in the eyes of the state, the Hills are still enemy territory untrustworthy, controllable, and expendable. The reason is that Muslim and non-Muslim mindsets work here. The authority does not consider non-Muslim Indigenous citizens here.

In fact, the behavior of the administration in the Hills proves again and again that the state does not view the people here as its own citizens. They are seen either as a “security threat” or as an “obstacle to development projects.”

So when Indigenous youth demand justice, the state sees it as “incitement.” But the same state calls Gaza or Palestine protests a sign of “humanity.”

How long will this hypocrisy continue?

These officers may be promoted and sent on UN peacekeeping missions one day. Their résumés will boast, “Served long years in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) with experience in counter-insurgency and peace enforcement.”

But these same officers encouraged Muslim settlers to rape Indigenous women in the Hills. They blocked peaceful protests demanding justice for rape. They saw calls for justice as “threats to national security.” They labeled justice-seeking voices as “anti-state.”

Yes, this is fundamentalism, the same ideology that gave birth to Hamas. The same ideology that orchestrated the horrific October 7, 2023 attack in Israel and the April 10, 1992 massacre in Logang in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Different names, same ideology.

Indigenous youths with Banners for justice (Photo by Amar Chakma from Khagrachari)

We know that October 7 was not just an attack on Israel; it was an attack on civilization. And the rape of an Indigenous girl in the Hills is no less a political act rooted in the same dehumanizing ideology.

I wonder, had Israel been defeated by Arab Muslims, wouldn’t their fate today be like the Indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts?

Some may argue not all Muslims are fundamentalists. That is true. But the Muslim heart remains the only soil where the seed of fundamentalism so often takes root.

The Gaza-Israel war has opened the eyes of the world to what Hamas wants and what the people of Gaza really bear in their minds about Israel. It also sheds light on what madrassas teach. The Chittagong Hill Tracts are beginning to recognize and learn from the Israeli experience.

Israel’s resilience has become a manual for every Indigenous people fighting for survival. In Bangladesh, the hills look to Jerusalem not for charity but for inspiration.

I don’t know whether the youth of the Hills will continue to bow their heads and beg or whether, this time, they will realize that to shake this state, they themselves must rise just as they once did to bring down the Hasina regime.

But one thing is clear: the youth of the Chittagong Hill Tracts are silently appealing to Israel in prayer, seeking strength to survive the same extremist ideology that Israel is fighting against.

April 20, 2025
Tokyo, Japan