Agartala, May 11: It takes them two days to reach their destination, but the long trek is the easiest part of their ordeal. The real test for these people, bonded labourers at the mercy of the banned National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), is to survive the grind that awaits them in the jhum (shifting cultivation) fields scattered across the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.
After killing and abducting people at will, the NLFT has now made bonded labourers out of as many as 4,500 tribal residents of villages along the Indo-Bangladesh border. These impoverished people are supposedly paying the price for voting the Left Front to power for the second successive time.
Tribal welfare minister Jiten Chowdhury said after a visit to the hilly interiors of Kanchanpur and Longtarai Valley subdivisions that tribal residents of these areas were being taken in batches to the no-man’s land across the border to work in the NLFT’s jhum fields.
“Since the poll results were declared, at least 4,500 tribals have been displaced from villages in Kanchanpur, Longtarai Valley and Khowai subdivisions. I have confirmation that 483, 253 and 250 families have been displaced from these three areas by the NLFT. Another 448 families have been driven away from other hilly regions.”
The minister said tribal villagers owing allegiance to the CPM were being persecuted even in areas where the NLFT’s alleged political wing — the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) — won the elections. He said most complaints had come from Ampi constituency of South Tripura and Chhawmanu constituency of Dhalai district.
Reports of tribals crossing over to the Baroncherra area of the Chittagong Hill Tracts to work as bonded labourers started filtering in last month. An official source in Ambassa, the headquarters of Dhalai district, said government employees based in Chhawmanu block came to know of this during visits to remote villages for health camps.
He said the NLFT had not spared even those suffering from enteric diseases. “During visits to villages like Gobindabari, Rajdhar and Malidhar, where there has been an outbreak of gastro-enteritis and other waterborne diseases, we were told that nobody was excused from a stint as a bonded labourer in the NLFT’s jhum fields. There are reports of diseased villagers dying without treatment after being taken to the Baroncherra area of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.”
The NLFT began shifting cultivation only recently. The first to be chosen as bonded labourers were tribal villagers of Gobindabari, Rajdhar, Malidhar. The militants gradually spread their net to villages under Chhawmanu block.
The villagers have to trek continuously for two days to reach the jhum fields across the border. During their stay there, the bonded labourers have to arrange for food and shelter on their own. They are usually forced to work continuously for two days, the only respite being a couple of hours of rest in thatched huts in the fields.
The tribal welfare minister said the NLFT militants were doing all this to spite the Left. “They claim to be fighting for the rights of the state’s tribal community, but they are actually terrorising their own people.”