when the dust clears

Dhaka—21 February 2010

Several hundred people, many of them from the Pahari indigenous ethnic minority, gathered in Muktangan in Dhaka to protest the murder yesterday of five Paharis in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region to the south, allegedly by the Bangladesh Army.

Today was also “Amar Ekushey,” a national holiday that commemorates the killing in 1952 of several Bengali patriots who fought the Pakistani government to make Bengali a national language.

The protesters in Muktangan effectively boycotted the holiday, highlighting a cruel irony: As Bangladesh, part of Pakistan until 1971, celebrates its first giant step toward self-determination, it represses and kills an indigenous group within its borders struggling toward the very same goal. And no, these are not the Rohingya ethnic group from Burma persecuted by the government.

The violence against Paharis, abetted by Bengali settlers, reportedly continues.