AGARTALAL, India, Aug. 14, Reuter: India and Bangladesh have agreed to start talks later this month on sending home 50,000 tribal refugees in India’s Tripura state.
Tripura Chief Minister Nripen Chakraborty told Reuters today the issue could be solved only if Dhaka granted the Chakma tribesmen at least as much autonomy as they had under British rule.
Bangladesh has resettled some 200,000 Moslem plainsmen in the Chittagong Hill tracts, the Chakmas’ traditional home, and a 14year guerrilla war has been waged to try to oust them.
In New Delhi last week, leftwing opposition groups including Tripura’s left front government resolved to press Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to put “necessary diplomatic pressure” on Dhaka to find a permanent solution to the insurgency.
Chakraborty said the Communist Party of India (Marxist), of which he is a politburo member, had resolved to ask Gandhi for a Sri Lanka type initiative for the return of the refugees, who say they fear torture and displacement if they go home.
If the deadlock on the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka could be broken politically, a similar solution should be explored for the Chakmas, he said.
The Dhaka government has repeatedly opposed any Indian supervision of repatriation and resettlement.
The talks, scheduled for August 27 in the Indian border town of Sabrum, include Indian and Bangladeshi officials, tribal leaders from the Hill tracts and leaders of the Tripura refugees.
Similar talks last year broke down and an Indian attempt to start repatriation last January ran into determined resistance by hunger striking refugees.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 21, 1987
