The PCJSS truncated the road block to 48 hours from 72 hours declared earlier to lessen the sufferings of people who left the region to celebrate the Eid-ul-Azha elsewhere, but Bangla-speakers asked the government to foil the blockade, saying it was bent on blocking people's safe home-return after the festival.

Fight For Equal Rights in the CHT -- a platform of Bangalees -- termed the PCJSS action 'anti-Muslim', as it was timed with the Eid-ul-Azha with the deliberate intent.

A PCJSS press release yesterday said four pickup vans and two speedboats of the United Nations Development Programme engaged in relief distribution in Mahalchhari would remain out of the programme.

Rival Bangalees damaged property of about 2,000 indigenous people in attacks on nine villages in Mahalchhari on 26 August last year.

The PCJSS enforced a similar programme on January 19 and 20 in support of the same demands of implementation of the peace pact that it signed with the past Awami League government in 1997, ending decades of bush war in the hilly terrain of Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban districts.

Other demands of the organisation include appointment of an ethnic leader as the chairman of the CHT Development Board by removing ruling BNP legislator Wadud Bhuiyan, pull-out of army and other security forces from the highlands and inclusion of an indigenous leader as a full-fledged CHT affairs minister in the cabinet.

Khagrachhari-based internal refugees, people who took shelter in Indian refugee camps at the height of insurgency in the CHT, have also called a 48-hour hartal for February 8 and 9 in the district demanding food ration throughout the year.