Jumma people


The Jumma people is a collective term for the indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region of present-day Bangladesh. They include the Chakma, Arakanese, Marma, Tripuri, Tanchangya, Chak, Pankho, Mru, Bawm, Lushai, Khyang, indigenous Assamese, and Khumi.
The name jumma is derived from jum cultivation, or slash-and-burn farming. It is a reappropriated term originally used by outsiders. They are also known as Pahari, which simply means "hill people".
The Jummas are native people, unrelated to Bangla spoken by ethnic Bengalis. Religiously they are distinct as well, most being Buddhist, some Hindu and some are Christianized, with only a small number having converted to Islam. In addition, they have retained some traditional religious practices.

Persecution by Bangladesh

In 1971, following the Bangladesh Liberation War in which Bangladesh achieved independence, the country's majority Bengali Muslims began strategically colonising the Chittagong Hill Tracts, which has displaced the Jumma people. Between 1978 and 1984, the government incentivised over 400,000 Bengali Muslims to settle in the CHT, by offering each family 5 acres of land and free food rations. Between 1979 and 1997, Bengali Muslim settlers and the Bangladesh military carried out over 15 major massacres of Buddhist peoples in the CHT. Due to the outbreaks of violence, communal and social unrest, many fled to the Indian states of Mizoram and Tripura, or to Burma. Amnesty International reports document systematic accounts of torture and extrajudicial executions of tribal inhabitants of the Chittagong Hill Tracts by security forces during 1989 and 1990.
Human Rights Watch has consistently reported that "indigenous groups in the Chittagong Hill Tracts have for decades faced discrimination, forced displacement, assaults, evictions, and destruction of property by both Bangladeshi security forces and Bengali settlers from elsewhere in the country. Bengali settlers and soldiers have raped native Jumma women "with impunity" with the Bangladeshi security forces doing little to protect the Jummas and instead assisting the rapists and settlers. In June 2017, Bengali rioters burned 100 indigenous homes in Langadu, reportedly even as army and police looked on.