A Bangladeshi court jailed an ethnic tribal leader for eight years for an alleged charge of extortion, about a year after he was released from nearly five years in secret detention.
A court in Rangamati district of Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT) region in southeast Bangladesh sentenced Michael Chakma and two others to eight years rigorous imprisonment on Oct. 8. The case was filed in 2007 during the tenure of the military-backed caretaker government.
Chakma, 46, an ethnic Chakma and Buddhist, is a leader of the CHT-based political organization, the United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF), which seeks autonomy for the hilly, forested, and restive region.
He disappeared while visiting the national capital, Dhaka, in 2019. Chakma told the media that the state forces kept him in secret locations until he was dropped off at the door of his home on Aug. 7, 2024, two days after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India following a massive student-led public uprising.
He is among about 700 victims of enforced disappearance during the 15-year authoritarian regime of Hasina’s Awami League government.
The interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus, which replaced the ousted regime, formed the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances to probe into hundreds of people who were either killed or secretly detained. Chakma was convicted in absentia in 2023 for alleged illegal possession of arms, which he termed “yet another false case.”
