Agartala, July15: Dhaka has started a planned resettlement of Bangladeshis from the plains in the Chittagong Hill Tracts area, giving rise to apprehension about fresh influx and ethnic conflicts on the Indian side of the border.

Muslim settlers, backed by Bangladesh army and paramilitary forces, have started grabbing tribal land by force and perpetrating atrocities on the hill folk. The new areas of resettlement in the Sajek range of the hill tracts are close to Tripura?s eastern border in the Dhalai and South Tripura districts.

Srotaranjan Khisa, a veteran Chakma leader of the INPT, said in the hilly areas along Rangamati-Sajek Road in Bagaicherri sub-district, around 28,000 Muslims from the plains have been resettled with government assistance in recent times. Earlier, 10,000 plains people were resettled in different parts of Khagaracherri and Bandarban districts. The settlers, Khisa added, have government sponsorship in the form of free ration and transportation from the plains. He accused the Bangladesh government ?of working with the sole purpose of reducing tribals to a minuscule minority in their homeland and populate the hilly areas bordering Tripura?.

Sources in the Border Security Force corroborated that new settlements of plains people have come up in areas close to Tripura?s eastern border in Gandacherra and Amarpur subdivisions.

Khisa added that the issue even came up during Bangladeshi Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia?s recent visit to Japan.

On July 12, leaders of Japanese NGOs, whose members include Chakma activists, met in a Buddhist temple at Shinjuku, Tokyo, and decided to apprise the Japan government of the situation in the hill tracts.

The next day a joint deputation of the leaders of the NGOs and two organisations of Jumma (tribal inhabitants of Chittagong Hill Tracts) met the Japanese ministry of foreign affairs. Khisa said leaders of the Jumma Peoples Network (JPN), based in Tokyo, and representatives of the Australia-based Jumma Peoples Network in Asia Pacific (JPNAP) met officials of the Japanese ministry and urged them to take up the issue with visiting Khaleda Zia.

?I do not know yet if these meetings achieved anything, but the issue needed to be highlighted as Bangladesh is systematically destroying the tribals of the Chittagong HillTracts,? Khisa said.

The Chittagong Hill Tracts had a tribal population of 97.5 per cent at the time of Partition when it was supposed to be included in India. But taking advantage of the prevailing confusion, Pakistan army occupied the hill tracts on August 20, 1947. Despite hardships and repression during the Pakistani rule, the tribals managed to survive. But after the outbreak of insurgency by Sahanti Vahini in the mid-Seventies the then president Zia-ur Rahman started resettling Muslims from the plains to reduce the tribals to a minority. By 2001, tribal population in the hill tracts had gone down to 55 per cent.

Sources said Tripura would also face problems as resettlement of Muslims along the state?s hilly eastern border would facilitate transborder movement of banned militants.