The Parbatya Chattagram Upajatiya Kalyan Samiti (United People's Welfare and Development Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts) was a political organisation created in 1966 in Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

 (then East Pakistan

East Pakistan

East Pakistan was a provincial state of Pakistan established in 14 August 1947. The provincial state existed until its declaration of independence on 26 March 1971 as the independent nation of Bangladesh. Pakistan recognized the new nation on 16 December 1971. East Pakistan was created from Bengal...

) to represent the 100,000 native peoples displaced by the construction of the Kaptai Dam

Kaptai Dam

Kaptai Dam is located on the Karnaphuli River at Kaptai, 65 km upstream from Chittagong in Rangamati District, Bangladesh. It is an earthfill embankment dam with a reservoir water storage capacity of 11,000 km². The primary purpose of the construction of the dam and reservoir was to generate...

 and seeking rehabilitation and compensation. It was the precursor to the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti, which emerged as the main political party in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Chittagong Hill Tracts

The Chittagong Hill Tracts comprise an area of 13,295 km2 in south-eastern Bangladesh, and borders India and Myanmar . It was a single district of Bangladesh until 1984. In that year it was divided into three separate districts: Khagrachari, Rangamati and Bandarban. Topographically, this is the...

 and founded the Shanti Bahini

Shanti Bahini

The Shanti Bahini was the name of the military wing of the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti - the United People's Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh....

 to carry out an insurgency

Insurgency

An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...

 against Bangladeshi state forces to gain autonomy

Autonomy

Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...

and rights for the tribes and people of the Hill Tracts.