In newsrooms across Bangladesh, the word 'Indigenous' has become too dangerous to put in print. Editors quietly strike it from the copy, wary that a single mention could invite the wrath of the state.
Through a campaign by the country’s military intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), and the Ministry of Information, mainstream journalism has effectively banished the term "Indigenous". Earlier in August, two cabinet ministers declared that Bangladesh has no indigenous population at all. Therefore, they argued, the word had no place in the national vocabulary.
This prohibition is not a mere update to a government style guide. To indigenous journalists, it is a calculated effort to rewrite history, erase distinct cultural identities, strip indigenous communities of long-recognised rights, and tighten the state’s grip on the press. ‘‘It feels like an attempt to strip away our identity and rights,’’ said Rikors Chakma, an Indigenous journalist working in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
Indigenous reporting has been driven to the brink of collapse by mounting pressure, according to him. Especially replacing Adivasi with terms such as "small ethnic groups" is aimed at omitting personal identity from reports, which creates frustration and a psychological barrier for journalists.
The consequences of defiance are swift. "Claiming there are no Indigenous people implies that their problems do not exist either," said Buddha Jyoti Chakma, an Indigenous journalist working in Chittagong Hill Tracts for more than two decades. He noted that news coverage of Indigenous issues is being actively suppressed.
Buddha Jyoti views the recent crackdown as a threat to Bangladesh’s entire Indigenous population. "If a minister holding a responsible state position purposefully claims that there are no Indigenous peoples in the country," he said, "it is dangerous for Indigenous communities."
Why Reporting on Indigenous Issues Matters
Bangladesh’s Indigenous communities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts are living under militarisation, enduring armed conflict, and facing extrajudicial killings. Journalists need to investigate these human rights violations. They can expose systemic abuses, hold authorities accountable, and amplify the silenced voices of marginalised communities. Ultimately, documenting these realities is a fundamental obligation of a free press.
Reporting on incidents such as the seizure of Indigenous forests and land, the rape of Indigenous women, and the torture and killing of Indigenous youths in the custody of law enforcement remains a major challenge for Bangladeshi journalists. The moment they arrive at the scene, they are confronted by the administration on site. Because the Chittagong Hill Tracts are dotted with numerous military checkpoints, journalists face constant interrogation as they pass through them. After a story is published, media workers are often summoned to army camps, where editors are pressured to take the story down.
Dipayan Khisha, former editor of IP News BD, said Indigenous journalists and news outlets in Bangladesh have long operated under the threat of censorship.
"The experience of running an Indigenous online news portal was not a pleasant one under the Hasina government," he told Al Jazeera Journalism Review. "Whenever we published news about human rights violations by law enforcement, it would be blocked almost immediately."
As editor of IP News, Khisha said he and his colleagues were forced to repeatedly change the site’s domain name to stay online. "We kept the core name, IP News, intact," he said, "but we had to keep switching domains just to keep the portal running."
Sydia Gulrukh worked as a journalist for more than a decade. In an interview, she said, "In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the civil and military administration has been waging a decades-long war on truth, controlling, directly or indirectly, the flow of information.’’ When the military issues a statement following a security operation or a rights violation, it arrives less as information than as instruction. The media is expected to relay the official narrative. Those who pursue independent leads do so at their peril.
Sydia added, "Journalists who question that account or pursue independent leads, whether reporting from the Hill Tracts or from Dhaka, can face consequences."
The latest escalation came on August 11, when Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed told a roundtable in Dhaka that no separate indigenous group exists in the country. The information minister, Zahir Uddin Swapan, went further, dismissing the term ‘‘indigenous’’ as irrelevant to Bangladesh altogether.
This linguistic policing spans administrations. In 2022, under the ousted government of Sheikh Hasina, the information ministry circulated a directive ordering television stations to drop the word "Indigenous". The order, signed by a deputy secretary in the information ministry, cited guidance from the DGFI. As early as 2015, military intelligence officers were pressured by major companies to pull advertising from two prominent newspapers. Just after, these newspapers described men killed by the army in the Chittagong Hill Tracts as indigenous rather than as "insurgents".
In this context, repeated statements from senior officials risk creating a climate of fear, self-censorship, intimidation, surveillance, or reprisals against journalists documenting legitimate human rights concerns. Protecting press freedom requires ensuring that journalists can report independently and accurately on Indigenous issues without political interference or intimidation.
Press Freedom Continues to Shrink in Bangladesh
A crackdown on the news media coincides with the ongoing struggle of Indigenous populations for recognition, land rights, and demilitarisation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Systemic intimidation has contributed to Bangladesh’s low ranking, 152nd, on the World Press Freedom Index.
"Bangladesh has had three governments in under two years: Hasina’s Awami League, the Yunus-led interim administration, and now Tarique Rahman’s BNP government since February 2026, and through each transition, journalists have been detained, prosecuted and surveilled," Kunal Majumdar says.
The Asia-Pacific Program Coordinator of CPJ noted that although Tareq Rahman’s government campaigned on a pledge to safeguard press freedom, meaningful progress remains limited.
Bangladesh has not ratified the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 169. Yet it remains bound by an earlier 1957 ILO convention on indigenous and tribal populations, as well as by the broader human rights covenants it has ratified. The fresh remarks from one of the BNP-led government’s top ministers drew swift condemnation from advocacy groups. In a joint statement, the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs and the International Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission said they viewed the ministers’ comments with grave concern and rejected the premise that Bangladeshi citizenship and indigenous identity are mutually exclusive.
"When senior government officials publicly declare that the term 'Indigenous' is irrelevant or deny the existence of Indigenous Peoples, it can inadvertently discourage journalists and media outlets from using internationally recognised terminology or covering Indigenous rights issues accurately." Kathrin Wessendorf, executive director at IWGIA, told Al Jazeera Journalism Review.
Kathrin stressed that the ministers’ remarks do not in themselves constitute a censorship measure, but they raise legitimate concerns about the broader environment for press freedom and civic space.
Responsible reporting depends on journalists being able to describe communities according to their own identities and document issues such as land rights, violence, discrimination, and implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord without political pressure. If state agencies continue to dictate how journalists cover marginalised Indigenous communities, the interference will not only perpetuate systemic injustice but also further suffocate press freedom in Bangladesh.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Al Jazeera Journalism Review
