Hill Voice, 28 October 2020, Rangamati: It has been alleged that army and upazila administration obstructed the seminar on university admission organized by the indigenous Jumma students studying in different universities of the country from Bilachhari upazila of Rangamati district. The incident took place at the only government high school in the upazila at around 12:00 am on Tuesday.
According to local sources, yesterday on 27 September 2020 at 10:00 am, Tuesday, at Bilaichhari Government High School a seminar on University admissions was organized by indigenous Jumma students studying in different universities across the country from Bilaichhari Upazila for the Jumma students enrolled in various government universities from Bilaichhari Upazila this year. They also got verbal permission from the Upazila Nirbahi Officer on 20 September 2020 for the event.
The seminar started at 10:00 am and was going well. At exactly 10:50 am, two men of intelligence department DGFI arrived there. They took the picture without taking permission. Then around 11:30 am the zone commander of Dighalchhari army zone along with a group of 10/15 soldiers appeared in the seminar room. After that a team of police led by Upazila Nirbahi Officer Parvez Choudhury arrived at the spot.
Dighalchhari Zone Commander and Upazila Nirbahi Officer raised questions about the word ‘Indigenous’ that was written on the banner. Both said “the word ‘indigenous’ is a forbidden word. You cannot write such anti-independence and anti-constitutional words on the banner.” Then another question was raised, ‘why Bengali students were not included here with the jumma students?’
At that time, the organizers said, ‘Adivasi (indigenous)’ is not an unconstitutional word. There is no line in the constitution to the effect that it cannot be called ‘indigenous’. We are conducting this seminar for all the students admitted in different government universities from the upazila. There is no writing on the banner that it is only for Jumma students. We called everyone. We informed the upazila administration to organize it.
At that time Upazila Nirbahi Officer Parvez Choudhury said that the Organizers did not inform him about the banner use.
After a long argument, Dighalchhari Zone Commander and Upazila Nirbahi Officer directed the seminar to end and the organizing committee was compelled to file another petition apologizing for using the word ‘Indigenous’.
