http://www.thedailystar.net/2004/02/07/d40207011010.htm
The Daily Star, Vol. 4 Num 248
Sat. February 07, 2004
Star Report
A 48-hour road blockade called by the Parbatya Chattagram Jano Sanghati
Samity (PCJSS) for the implementation of landmark Chittagong Hill Tracts
(CHT) peace agreement begins in the highlands tomorrow amid strong
opposition by Bangla-speaking people.
The PCJSS truncated the road block to 48 hours from 72 hours declared
earlier to lessen the sufferings of people who left the region to
celebrate the Eid-ul-Azha elsewhere, but Bangla-speakers asked the
government to foil the blockade, saying it was bent on blocking people's
safe home-return after the festival.
Fight For Equal Rights in the CHT -- a platform of Bangalees -- termed
the PCJSS action 'anti-Muslim', as it was timed with the Eid-ul-Azha
with the deliberate intent.
A PCJSS press release yesterday said four pickup vans and two speedboats
of the United Nations Development Programme engaged in relief
distribution in Mahalchhari would remain out of the programme.
Rival Bangalees damaged property of about 2,000 indigenous people in
attacks on nine villages in Mahalchhari on 26 August last year.
The PCJSS enforced a similar programme on January 19 and 20 in support
of the same demands of implementation of the peace pact that it signed
with the past Awami League government in 1997, ending decades of bush
war in the hilly terrain of Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban
districts.
Other demands of the organisation include appointment of an ethnic
leader as the chairman of the CHT Development Board by removing ruling
BNP legislator Wadud Bhuiyan, pull-out of army and other security forces
from the highlands and inclusion of an indigenous leader as a
full-fledged CHT affairs minister in the cabinet.
Khagrachhari-based internal refugees, people who took shelter in Indian
refugee camps at the height of insurgency in the CHT, have also called a
48-hour hartal for February 8 and 9 in the district demanding food
ration throughout the year.