The Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), a political organization of the indigenous Jumma people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), has published its ‘Annual Report on the Human Rights Situation in the CHT of 2025’. The report, signed by PCJSS’s Assistant Information and Publicity Secretary Sajib Chakma, was released Thursday (January 1, 2026).
The PCJSS’s human rights report states that the interim government has excluded indigenous communities, as well as religious and ethnic minorities, from discussions regarding constitutional and other reform processes. The July Charter adopted by the interim government also makes no mention of the implementation of the CHT Accord or any issues concerning religious and ethnic minorities. This clearly indicates deep-seated discrimination against indigenous communities and religious minorities even during the interim government’s tenure.
The report further states that no progress was made in implementing the CHT Accord of 1997 even during the interim government led by Dr. Muhammad Yunus. As a result, two-thirds of the clauses of the Accord, including its fundamental provisions, remain unimplemented.
Due to the non-implementation of the CHT Accord, the human rights situation in the CHT deteriorated further in 2025. In 2025, 268 incidents of human rights violations were committed in the CHT by security forces and law enforcement agencies, army-backed armed terrorist groups, communal and fundamentalist groups, Rohingya armed militants, Muslim Bengali settlers, and land grabbers, and 606 Jumma people were victims of these human rights violations.
Of the 268 human rights violations that occurred in 2025, 163 were committed by security and law enforcement agencies, and 224 Jumma people were victims in these violations. Extrajudicial killings continued in the CHT during the interim government’s tenure, like previous governments. Eight Jumma people were killed in 2025, including three who were shot dead by the army while protesting against the gang rape of a Marma girl. Most concerning is that those involved in these killings have not been brought to justice, and no cases have been filed.
Innocent Jumma people are being arrested by planting arms on them, implicating them in false cases, and using pretexts of terrorism and extortion. In 2025, 117 Jumma people were arrested by the security forces and police. Of these, 47 were temporarily detained, tortured, and then released. The remaining 70 were sent to jail. In 2025, army and BGB (Border Guard Bangladesh) members conducted search operations in at least 193 Jumma-inhabited villages. In these operations, at least 65 Jumma people were beaten, threatened, and injured. 43 houses, including two Buddhist temples, were searched and valuables of the houses ransacked. In 2025, 26 incidents of violence against Jumma women and girls were perpetrated by security forces and Muslim settlers, resulting in 32 Jumma women and girls becoming victims of human rights violations such as rape, murder after rape, sexual harassment, and physical torture.
In 2025, two large-scale brutal communal attacks and arson incidents were perpetrated against the Jumma people of the CHT and the country’s indigenous population. Following a protest against the gang rape of a Jumma teenage girl by Bengali settlers in the Singinala area of Khagrachhari district headquarters, a brutal communal attack and arson were carried out against the Jumma people by Bengali Muslim settlers on September 27-28, 2025, with the instigation of the army. In this attack, carried out jointly by the army and Bengali settlers in the Guimara Ramsu Bazar area of Khagrachari town and its surrounding Jumma settlements, three Jumma people were killed and at least 20 others were injured. Additionally, 54 shops, 26 houses, and 16 motorcycles belonging to the Jumma people in Ramsu Bazar were destroyed by fire.
Despite the aforementioned communal attack on the Jumma people and the killing of three Jummas by army gunfire, the police, instead of taking action against the perpetrators, filed three separate cases against the Jumma people, accusing them of violence and vandalism.
In the name of growing rubber plantation, horticulture and establishment of tourist centers, incidents of forcible occupation of graveyards, Buddhist temples, Jum-cultivation lands in Lama, Alikadam, Naikhyongchari and Bandarban sadar Upazilas of Bandarban Hill District continues at the initiative of various outside companies together with influential individuals of government and non-government entities by using the administrative tools, such as, forcible eviction, filing up false cases, carrying out communal attacks and setting fire in the dwelling houses, etc.
From among the 268 incidents occurred in 2025, 41 incidents were carried out by the Muslim Bengali settlers and land grabbers in which 228 Jumma people including religious conversion of 30 Mro children fell prey to human rights violations and at least 300 acres of lands were illegally occupied.
The influx of Rohingya into Bandarban is continuing unabated. During the infiltration, the police detained only 67 Rohingyas. Meanwhile, in 2025, the Rohingya armed militant group ARSA-ASO abducted three Tanchangya villagers from Ghumdhum in Naikhyongchari and killed them later.
It is worth mentioning that the inclusion of the non-Muslim-majority CHT in the Islamic state of Pakistan during the partition of India in 1947 led to injustice and oppression against the Jumma people, who are predominantly Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian. This is the root cause of the CHT problem. Even after Bangladesh gained independence through the Liberation War in 1971, successive Bangladeshi governments have continued Pakistan’s unfinished agenda of transforming the non-Muslim-majority CHT into a Muslim-majority region and have systematically perpetrated human rights violations against the Jumma people of the CHT, including communal attacks, arson, land grabbing, forced evictions and conversion to Islam.
