Author: Satyabrata Chakrabarty
Publication: The Statesman
Date: February 15, 2004
Brandishing their AK-47s, insurgents
are forcibly carrying away poor tribals from Tripura to work as slaves
on their farms in Bangladesh, much as Africans were carted out of their
continent by Europeans in the 17th century to work on American cotton fields.
Official sources told The Statesman
they had received information that militants of outlawed outfits have been
abducting an as yet unspecified number of tribals - men and women from
Tripura's interior hill villages - each year. These tribals are put to
work in jhum cultivated land in Bangladesh's Chittagong hills region, where
many militant organisations are thought to own farm houses and granaries.
A large number of tribals have been
taken this time from the inaccessible hill villages of North Tripura's
Longthorai valley sub- division and from Govindabari and Chhamanu. These
tribals are forced to stay in the Chittagong hill areas for months to finish
the farm work.
"It's quite difficult to engage
security contingents for each of the remote hill villages," an official
pointed out. To do away with the problem of security and to make administrative
benefits available to the most backward hill community, the state government
has started a move to regroup hill villages in a systematic way.
The Centre has approved the state's
scheme for setting up a cluster of 24 villages in North Tripura's Dhalai
district, where several thousand tribal families will be rehabilitated
in the next five years.
The villagers will be shifted from
interior hill areas and resettled in cluster villages where each family
will be given an acre of land and a house under the "Indira Awas Yojna"
besides safe drinking water, health, educational and employment facilities.
Proper security arrangements will be made for each of the cluster villages.
The Centre has given Rs 168 crore
to implement the scheme in the first phase. More tribal villages will be
covered in next phases. Cluster villages will come up on both sides of
the Ambasa-Gandachhara road and Chhailengta-Chhamanu road in North and
Dhalai districts.
Over 13,000 tribal families from
about 100 hill villages will be rehabilitated in 24 cluster villages in
the first phase.
The Tripura chief minister, Mr Manik
Sarkar, had met the Union minister for forest and environment in Delhi
recently to discuss the scheme.
The director-general of the Union
forest ministry, Mr NK Joshi, visited the state last month to assess the
situation. The Centre has advised the state authorities to complete work
on regrouping the hill villages in a particular district before starting
work in another district.
