The Daily Star, Mon. September 01, 2003
http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/09/01/d3090101022.htm
Star Report
The situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) has turned volatile with
the army fighting gunbattles with terrorists in Rangamati.
Indigenous people staged demonstrations in Dhaka and Khagrachhari yesterday
to protest attacks on their villages.
In Bandarban, army raided a village and arrested four criminals.
Troops fought a half-an-hour firefight with terrorists at Betchhari under Barkal
upazila in Rangamati yesterday and caught a terrorist, Sumon Chakma, 20, with
one light gun, one.22 bore rifle and 97 rounds of bullets.
When the army team reached the remote area of Betchhari on a tip-off, the terrorists
opened fire on the army men, prompting them to retaliate.
After the fight, the army searched the area and recovered, among other things, six sets of combat uniforms, six pieces of haversacks, one blanket, tents and cheque books.
The arrestee claimed himself to be a member of the United People's Democratic Front (UPDF), an anti-peace accord organisation in the hill region.
In another development, the army in a lightening pre-dawn raid yesterday on
a village, Lulaing Para, some 11-km from Bandarban town, arrested four persons.
Upon their confessions, the army later recovered the body of an indigenous youth, Kina Ram, who was abducted on August 23.
Meantime, several hundred indigenous people yesterday protested in Khagrachhari
and Dhaka after violent clashes with plains people.
The demonstrators blocked the Khagrachhari-Chittagong road as police and troops
were on high alert as part of a 72-hour strike called by the UPDF to protest
at the attacks on the indigenous people at Mahalchhari which left one person
dead.
In Dhaka, some 100 indigenous men and women staged a brief rally at Dhaka University before being stopped by police from marching towards the Prime Minister's Office.
"The attacks in Mahalchhari has added yet another black chapter to the history of the Chittagong Hill Tracts," Mithun Chakma, president of the CHT Hill Student's Council, told the rally.
The protestors carried placards and banners which read: "No full autonomy, no rest".
They submitted a memorandum to the prime minister, alleging that plains people looted and set afire 348 houses and ransacked a Buddhist temple.
They demanded a judicial probe into the Mahalchhari incidents, dismissal of
the security personnel involved in the attacks and beginning of talks on autonomy.