All events · Empires Unmade

The Chittagong Hill Tracts: the Kaptai Dam, Settlement and Counter-Insurgency

1960–1997 · South & Central Asia

Displacement Territory Seized Mass Killing Sexual Violence

Displaced

500,000

The Kaptai dam, completed in 1962, flooded about 40 per cent of the region's cultivable land and displaced roughly 100,000 people, of whom some 40,000 Chakma crossed into India; government-sponsored settlement moved an estimated 300,000-400,000 Bengali settlers into the Hill Tracts between 1979 and 1985, displacing indigenous households from their land; counter-insurgency operations concentrated an estimated 70,000 or more indigenous villagers into guarded 'cluster villages'; and around 70,000 refugees fled to Tripura in India during the 1980s. Figures come from Bangladeshi government records, Indian refugee registration, and reporting by Amnesty International, the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission and IWGIA.

Share of the population affected

1.3×

of the population of the Chittagong Hill Tracts around the building of the Kaptai dam, almost all of it indigenous, 1961

Killed

2,500–10,000

conflict deaths incl. combatants

Territory

13,295 km²

The Chittagong Hill Tracts, whose indigenous share of population fell from roughly 90 per cent in 1951 to about half by 1991 through state-sponsored settlement

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What happened

The Kaptai hydroelectric dam, built in East Pakistan and completed in 1962, submerged the Chakma royal capital and about two-fifths of the region's arable land, displacing around 100,000 indigenous people with minimal compensation and sending some 40,000 into India. After Bangladeshi independence the indigenous Jumma peoples' demand for autonomy was rejected, the region was militarised, and the armed Shanti Bahini began an insurgency in 1977. From 1979 successive governments sponsored the settlement of several hundred thousand Bengalis from the plains onto land claimed by indigenous communities, and the army concentrated indigenous villagers into guarded cluster villages; Amnesty International, the independent Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission and IWGIA documented massacres of indigenous civilians at Logang, Longadu, Naniarchar and elsewhere between 1980 and 1993, arson, sexual violence and the flight of some 70,000 people to Tripura. The 1997 Peace Accord ended the insurgency and provided for a regional council, land commission and the withdrawal of temporary camps, but indigenous organisations say its key provisions remain unimplemented and the Bangladeshi government maintains that most have been carried out. The demographic balance of the region was permanently altered.

Parties

Pakistani and then Bangladeshi governments flooded, settled and militarised the indigenous Chittagong Hill Tracts

Disputed

The Bangladeshi government disputes the characterisation of settlement as state-organised displacement and disagrees with indigenous organisations over implementation of the 1997 Accord; casualty figures for the massacres of the 1980s and 1990s are contested.

The denominator

The 1951 census counted 247,053 people in the Hill Tracts, over 97 per cent of them indigenous, and the count for 1961 is usually given as roughly 385,000. By the 1991 census the district held 974,445, of whom 501,144 were indigenous Jumma and 473,301 Bengali settlers, the result of the state-sponsored settlement of the late 1970s and 1980s. The Kaptai dam flooded about 40 per cent of the district's arable land and displaced some 100,000 people in 1960-63.

The affected figure sums the Kaptai displacement of the early 1960s with counter-insurgency displacement and land loss over the following three decades, during which the district's population more than doubled, so it exceeds the 1961 baseline and the share passes 100 per cent.

Where the baseline comes from

Chittagong Hill Tracts — Wikipediaopen-edited
Population in CHT — Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samitipress

On the death toll

The lower figure aggregates deaths in the documented massacres and counter-insurgency operations recorded by Amnesty International and the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission; the higher figure comes from Jumma organisations' cumulative claims across the whole 1977-1997 conflict, including deaths in camps and from displacement. Neither has been tested by an official inquiry.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSexual ViolenceDestruction of PropertyForced LabourArbitrary Detention

Amnesty International, the independent Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission and IWGIA documented massacres, rape, arson and forced labour by security forces and settlers.

Movements mapped

Jumma refugees to camps in Tripura, India70,000
State-sponsored Bengali settlement into the Hill Tracts350,000

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Bangladesh, India

Sources

This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.

Chittagong Hill Tracts conflictopen-edited
Kaptai Damopen-edited
IWGIA: Indigenous peoples in Bangladeshpress