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Madhupur eco-park AL MPs ask govt to drop scheme

Staff Correspondent
An Awami League (AL) parliamen-tary delegation yesterday demanded immediate scrap of Madhupur cco-park project and a judicial probe under a sitting judge into the killing of an anti-scheme protester.
"The repression on indigenous people must stop," said Abdul Hamid, deputy leader of Ilie opposition and chief of the delegation, at a press briefing after his team's visit to Madhupur area on Friday.
The delegation, also comprising local legislator Abdur Razzak Bhola, Opposition Whip Faruk Khan and Promod Mankin, visited the Joinagachha house of Piren Slang, an indigenous man who was killed on January 3 when police and forest guards opened fire on a group of demonstrators.
The government is planning to develop an cco-park under aboutTk 9 crore Madhupur National Park Development Project in the 3,000-acre heart of the sal forest, sparking angry protest from indigenous people who live in the forest for ages and fear the project will destroy their peace.
Hamid came down heavily on the government policy of development which he said was characterised by 'killing people who protest'.
"The government took the indigenous people's protest as a flimsy excuse and wanted to silence them at the barrel of gun," he added.
"Now the forest guards and police are framing innocent ethnic minority in false cases in a fresh wave of harassment," he alleged.
Hamid asked the government to drop the charges or not to follow the cases filed against the indigenous people in the wake of Piren's killing.
He demanded allocation of the lands, enjoyed by indigenous people for generations, among themselves.
Bhola said any development scheme in the area should be taken in consultation with the ethnic Garo or Koch people.
Promod, lone lawmakers from the Garo community, said repression on the community began before independence by the Pakistani regime and peaked after the promulgation of the Special Atia Forest Ordinance.
He said Garos lived in the area for ages and paid taxes to the Zaminders, but the Pakistani government stopped taking taxes from them in 1952-53.
Since then the people of the community are living under the shadow of land insecurity, he said.
Hamid asked the government to form a high-powered committee to resolve the land disputes in the areas inhabited by indigenous people.