The Chittagong Hill Tracts Welfare Association (Bengali: Parbatya Chattagram Upajatiya Kalyan Samiti) was a clandestine political organisation created in East Pakistan in December 1966 to defend the rights of the tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).
The Kaptai Dam, completed in 1962, submerged 40% of the arable land in the CHT and displaced 100,000 indigenous people.
Their majority status was threatened by large scale migration of Bengali Muslim settlers to the CHT.
[6] University of Dhaka academics Zahid Ul Arefin Choudhury and Khairul Chowdhury described the association as student-based, with a "pro-Chinese radical Marxist" ideology.
[6][8] It was the precursor to the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti, which emerged as the main political party in the CHT and founded the Shanti Bahini to carry out an insurgency against Bangladeshi state forces to gain autonomy and rights for the tribes and people of the Hill Tracts.