Historic Logang March Day Today

Today is April 28, an unforgettable day in the history of the movement in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. It is the historic Logang March Day. On this day in 1992, a historic silent march was held from Khagrachhari Sadar towards Logang in protest of the Logang massacre. Thousands of students and people participated in this march under the leadership of the Hill Students Council. To protest the Logang massacre and pay respect to the martyrs, this march towards Logang started on April 28, 1992, from Karaitola (Khagrachhari Government College premises) in Khagrachhari Sadar.

Thousands of students and people from the three hill districts joined this march. Leaders of progressive political parties, student leaders, journalists, human rights activists, and writers who came from Dhaka also participated in this march, expressing solidarity with the movement of the Jumma people. Their participation infused more strength and courage into the minds of the Jumma people.

Ignoring all bloodshot eyes and obstacles that day, the students and people marched to the Logang Porabhita, the site of the carnage, constructed a temporary memorial, paid utmost respect to the martyrs by laying floral wreaths, and completed the funeral rites of the martyrs according to religious rituals. This gave a new dimension to the struggle in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

For context, on April 10, 1992, with the direct cooperation of various state forces, settler Bengalis attacked the Jumma cluster village in Logang of Panchhari upazila in Khagrachhari and carried out a brutal massacre. The settlers attacked the hill people with machetes, chopper blades, and axes, and members of the state forces indiscriminately opened fire on the Jumma people. Hundreds of hill people were killed and injured. Many went missing. No child, elderly person, or woman was spared that day.

In 1992, at a meeting organized under the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Ramendu Shekhar Dewan, as the spokesperson of the Shanti Bahini, strongly protested against the Logang massacre and delivered his speech, in which he exposed the horror and entirety of that genocide. He claimed that 1500 Jumma families were evicted by state forces in this incident. 800 houses were destroyed and about 1200 people were killed. In fact, the cluster village was turned into a burial ground.

This genocide sent another wave of Jumma refugees into the Indian state of Tripura. No justice has been served for this brutal genocide to this day. Source: CHT NEWS