by Mrinal Kanti Tripura and Sophie Grig
Information of the demise of Dr. Ramendu Shekhar Dewan, who died lately on the age of 89, has been obtained with immense unhappiness.
For a number of a long time, Dr R.S. Dewan (as he was mostly identified) was a UK-based worldwide spokesperson for Jumma peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh.
Because the Seventies he devoted himself to working a world marketing campaign in opposition to the human rights violations and large land theft taking place in his homeland, recurrently sending updates and stories, to a whole lot of individuals and organisations. At Survival Worldwide, we’ve got been receiving these stories, typed until the top on a guide typewriter, because the early Nineteen Eighties. They have been a fount of information, and have been important in maintaining the worldwide neighborhood knowledgeable in regards to the atrocities within the CHT, enabling Survival and others to marketing campaign.
The CHT was closely militarized: at its peak there was one soldier for each six Indigenous Jummas. Getting data out was due to this fact extraordinarily tough, so Dr Dewan’s stories have been usually the one method for individuals outdoors to study in regards to the violence being waged in opposition to the Jummas. For instance, his work was instrumental in constructing the worldwide stress that, in 1990, pushed the federal government of Bangladesh to agree to permit an impartial fee into the CHT. The fee confirmed that the horrors depicted in Dr Dewan’s stories have been true.
Few individuals have been as devoted to the trigger as Dr Dewan. He campaigned day and night time for many years, usually at the price of his well being and all the time on the expense of his personal consolation. Till the top, he led a frugal life, consuming largely chilly, dry meals that didn’t have to be cooked, disconnecting the electrical energy and heating in his flat (regardless of residing within the chilly north of England) to be able to spend all his cash on his campaigning work. He defined this saying: “If the PCJSS [Jumma political] activists can endure coldness staying and shifting within the jungle and hill streams, then why would I not be capable to keep inside with out electrical energy and heater?”
Dr Dewan moved to London in 1967 to check chemistry. With the signing of the CHT Peace Accord in 1997, his household hoped that he would return house, however he by no means did, not trusting the federal government and believing he may have an even bigger influence by lobbying from outdoors the nation. He devoted his life to attaining his dream of self-determination for the Jumma individuals, however he left the world with out seeing his dream fulfilled.
Regardless of his personal austere way of life, refusing to spend any cash on himself, Dr Dewan was extremely beneficiant and considerate to others. He’ll all the time be remembered at Survival, and world wide, for his braveness, dedication and large contribution to the reason for the Jumma peoples, in addition to for his kindness. He has impressed generations of Jumma and non-Jumma activists and shall be vastly missed.
