Access to Justice Denied: Sexual Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls in Bangladesh

Written on 08 June 2026. Posted in News

BY RANI YAN YAN FOR INDIGENOUS DEBATES

Sexual assault, including rape and murder after rape, is the most prevalent form of violence perpetrated against Indigenous women and girls in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). Indigenous women and girls live under a "culture of impunity" where sexual violence is used as a weapon of political and territorial control. The perpetuation of a culture of impunity is not the result of mere weak institutions but rather a consequence of the systematic and deliberate State oppression of Indigenous Peoples, involving militarization and settler expansion in the region.

The CHT region has been subjected to decades of militarization and a state-sponsored settlement program that began in 1979 with the objective of demographic engineering. More than 400,000 landless and destitute Bengali people were relocated to the region, settled on Indigenous Peoples’ land and provided with food rations that continue to this day.  Despite regulations prohibiting non-indigenous citizens from owning land in the CHT, the number of Bengalis has continued to grow. This demographic shift had thus transformed Indigenous Peoples from 96% of the population in the 1940s to 50% by 2022.

The CHT Accord of 1997, a peace treaty signed between the Indigenous movement that had led the resistance since 1974 and the ruling government party, included provisions to resolve land conflicts between Indigenous Peoples and settlers and to demilitarize the CHT by removing over 230 temporary army camps, among others. Had the CHT Accord been fully implemented by successive governments, the military occupation and settler expansion could have been halted. However, the lack of political will of successive governments to implement the Accord has resulted in a continuation of de facto military rule in CHT.

There is a symbiotic relationship between military occupation and settler expansion. Settlers rely on military protection to claim, retain and expand land ownership, while the military, with the aim of consolidating and retaining its power in CHT, depends on settlers who act as the civilian props for the military and, at times, as instruments against Indigenous resistance. In this context, when sexual violence against Indigenous women or girls is perpetrated by Bengalis, the military –in conjunction with the State institutions and other state agencies– systematically tries to protect the perpetrators.

A Repeating Pattern: the Lack of Police Cooperation

The steps for covering up crimes of sexual violence follow a recurring pattern, especially for cases that spark public outrage. And cases that gain a greater degree of national and international visibility are often the least likely to result in justice for the victims. Paradoxically, the more attention these cases receive, the more intensive the efforts of the State agencies to shield the perpetrators. In a few extreme cases, such efforts culminate in communal attacks on Indigenous Peoples by the settler Bengalis, resulting in deaths and destruction. Drawing upon four notorious sexual violence cases from the past decade, the subsequent analysis illustrates the processes by which justice is denied to the Indigenous victims.

Firstly, when family members of victims attempt to file complaints of sexual violence allegedly perpetrated by settlers, the officers in charge almost invariably show reluctance to receive them. After much persuasion and persistence, when police eventually agree to receive or file a case, critical information (such as eyewitness accounts or specific details that are crucial for future investigation) is often omitted or misrepresented. This is done intentionally to leave space for doubt and to enable the fabrication of an alternate narrative that will ultimately shield the perpetrators from accountability.

In September 2025, a 12-year-old Indigenous Marma schoolgirl stated that she had been raped by three settler Bengalis. According to her father, when he went to file a complaint, the police pressured him to describe perpetrators as “three unidentified men”, despite having eyewitness accounts of three Bengalis following her before the incident. Following the rape and murder of a Chakma woman in February 2014, her husband provided the names of three suspects based on eyewitness accounts. The police deliberately omitted those names when drafting the case and, without informing the changes to the husband (who was illiterate), police obtained his signature on the document the next day.  

In May 2025, the district commissioner and police questioned whether any crime had even been committed when an indigenous Khyang woman was brutally murdered after an alleged rape, despite having clear evidence of homicide. Her dead body was found stripped naked, the skull crushed. In their press release, police left out a crucial eyewitness account of her being harassed by three Bengalis a day earlier. In 2018, when two Marma sisters went to seek medical care at the district hospital for injuries they sustained after being allegedly raped by two soldiers, the law enforcement agencies unlawfully arrested and held them in an abandoned ward in that same hospital for more than three weeks.

Manipulation of Medical Evidence and Institutional Complicity

Forensic medical examinations are essential in substantiating cases of sexual assault. After filing cases, if public demonstrations demanding justice and condemnation from civil society have already occurred, the medical authority delays in producing the reports and they will eventually most likely return a negative result. In the two Marma sisters’ case, the initial medical report that was prepared and submitted in due time was withheld by the law enforcement agencies, and, two weeks later, a new second report with a negative result was produced by another medical examiner. 

Medical examiners risk serious retribution if they refuse to manipulate reports. On one occasion, a false accusation of corruption was even suddenly made against the examiner a few days after he had produced the first medical report. This ruined his medical career in the public sector. This false case thus simultaneously functioned as a method of punishment for his non-compliance, as coercion to maintain his silence on the ongoing rape case and as a warning to other medical examiners of the consequences of failing to comply.

The report on the Marma schoolgirl was withheld for several days. The strictly confidential medical report on this minor girl, containing her photo and personal information, was leaked to, and widely shared on, settler-run online media outlets and a few popular news media outlets even before it had been handed over to police by the hospital authority. It is notable that, in the days leading up to this, settler organizations staged a series of demonstrations asserting that no rape had occurred, indicating their apparent foreknowledge of the report’s predetermined outcome. 

The information in the report had visibly been tampered with. The date of examination was written over with a new date, and was signed by the examiners with the previous date. By doing so, inconsistencies in information could not be avoided. No relevant authority undertook any investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of the confidential report or the discrepancies therein.

Narrative Control through Media

In recent years, mainstream media, online news portals and social media platforms have been extensively used to propagate narratives that delegitimize Indigenous Peoples’ demands for justice. While Indigenous protests receive minimal media coverage, settler organization-led counter demonstrations are extensively reported. Additionally, the media function as pro-military propaganda instruments. At the same time, scores of settlers run online news portals and social media platforms that spread false news about Indigenous resistance. This campaign aims to present Indigenous Peoples as anti-State forces and Indigenous rights defenders as separatists.      

In this context, when Indigenous Peoples intensify their demands for justice for crimes committed against women and girls, a coordinated campaign is launched to shift public debate from justice for victims to doubt as to the intention of the Indigenous protests. Generating a negative medical report is therefore essential in promoting the narrative that “Indigenous separatists” use false rape accusations to create agitation against the military and settler Bengalis with the aim of destabilizing the region.  

In extreme cases, communal attacks on Indigenous communities are orchestrated to intimidate, to reinforce the propaganda narrative and to divert attention away from demands for justice. In the 2014 rape and murder case of the Chakma woman, settlers launched a series of communal attacks on Indigenous villagers using rumors about a missing Bengali child. In the case of the Marma schoolgirl, attacks and arson swept across the district for two days, killing at least three and injuring scores of Indigenous people, as well as destroying property. There are strong allegations that the military backed these attacks and fired on the Indigenous villagers. These attacks followed the same pattern of spreading rumors about Indigenous aggression against settler Bengalis while the coordinated use of social media amplified their impact.   

No investigations into communal attacks were launched by the authorities in either of these two cases. Conversely, in the case of the Marma girl, false charges were brought against more than a dozen Indigenous youth under several laws, including the Special Powers Act, a draconian law frequently used to suppress Indigenous Peoples. It can be fairly stated that the very structure that systematically provides impunity to perpetrators of sexual violence also ensures impunity for the subsequent violence inflicted upon Indigenous communities seeking justice.

This article synthesizes testimonies from Indigenous rights defenders working in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, along with reports from documented sources.

Rani Yan Yan is an Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights Defender with a decade-long experience in pursuing justice for Indigenous victims of sexual violence. She serves as the Advisor to the Chakma Circle, one of the Indigenous governance institutions in Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Foto de portada: Arnab Dewan

Tags: Indigenous Debates