The Garo and Khasi indigenous communities live in the north and northeastern part of Bangladesh close to the Indian border. Majority of the Garos and Khasis live in Meghalaya, India. Some of them live in Tripura, Koch Bihar, Assam and Mizoram. The total population of them in Bangladesh is about 120,000. The Garos and Khasis belong to a matrilineal society and most of them have become Christians through the years.

For centuries, the indigenous peoples in Bangladesh have been facing the severe effects of government policies like land grabbing, forceful migration, and human rights violation including the colonial policy of divide and rule.

Since 1947 after the British rule, the then government of Pakistan organized population transfer programme to the Garo region and thousands of Bengali Muslims had settled on indigenous land. Now the indigenous peoples became a minority in their own homeland.

Hundreds of Garo and Khasi villages had completely disappeared. Land was the source of life and livelihood for them. But lands were taken by outsiders from the indigenous peoples. After the loss of land, many indigenous peoples have migrated to the towns and cities for job.

The Bangladesh Government does not have any policy for the development of indigenous populations. Many times these people have faced forceful eviction from their homeland in the name of development projects like building dams, national parks, Eco-parks, protected areas, reserve forests and even establishing military base on their ancestral homeland. Thus indigenous peoples became most the marginalized and vulnerable group in the country. The state of Bangladesh in its thirty five years of independence has never recognized these indigenous peoples in the constitution.

The indigenous peoples of Modhupur Forest are now in danger. About 25,000 Garos are facing serious violations of human rights like killings, torture, oppressions by filing false cases, putting in jail, rape etc. The State policy of Bangladesh is going to destroy their life totally by evicting them forcibly from their ancestral homeland.

The Bangladesh Government plans to establish an Eco-Park in Moulvibazar district, which will take up more than 1,500 acres of indigenous people's ancestral land for tourism. This plan was initiated by the government in July 2000 without any consent of indigenous peoples who have been living in the area for centuries. Bangladesh government did not consult with the indigenous peoples. The government did not even mention the villages of Khasi and Garo people in their project proposal, instead considering them almost illegal inhabitants of the forest.

Seven indigenous hill villages will be affected: 1,000 Khasi and Garo families will face forceful eviction from their homelands where they have been living for thousand of years.

Indigenous peoples have been struggling for long to cancel the Eco-park project, but the government continues to support the project. This is the source of the continuing tension within the Garos and Khasis communities.