Attacks, land grabs leave Bangladesh’s Indigenous groups on edge

From targeted attacks to land grabs, the country’s most marginalised people suffer as little help comes from government.

Dhaka, Bangladesh – On the night of May 31, Agrojyoti Bhante was brutally attacked by two machete-wielding men at a monastery in Khagrachari, 270km (168 miles) south of capital Dhaka in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The attackers, later identified as two Bengali construction workers who worked at the monastery, also looted about 60,000 takas ($700) from the monastery and left the 47-year-old Buddhist monk, belonging to one of Bangladesh’s Indigenous communities, for dead. While no accurate data on the number of Indigenous people in Bangladesh is available, a census conducted by the government in 2011 found they are about 1.6 million.