Rights body lashes out at home minister
STAFF REPORTER
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticised home minister Asaduzzaman Khan for his comments on the rights bodys recent report on secret detentions and enforced disappearances in the country.
The international watchdog defended its report and denied the allegation that this was a smear campaign. Instead of agreeing to investigate these incidents, Khan declared that his government would reject the report outright, the New York-based human rights body stated in a release yesterday.
Just hours after the HRW released the 82-page report on Thursday, the home minister termed it a smear campaign. Who are you claiming to have disappeared? Many businessmen went into hiding failing to repay their loans. Some people went missing after developing extramarital relationships, HRW quoted Khan as having said.
South Asia director of HRW Meenakshi Ganguly claimed that the minister callously ignored the victims families who are desperately waiting for answers.
In the report, the HRW urged the Bangladesh government to launch an independent investigation into the allegations of secret detentions and enforced disappearances and prosecute security forces responsible for such egregious rights violations.
In the report, the HRW has produced a detailed analysis of the cases in which individuals were picked up, often in front of witnesses or family members by security force personnel who identified themselves as members of the Rapid Action Battalion
(RAB), Detective Branch (DB), or the administration. When these people were not produced in court within 24 hours, as required under Bangladeshi law, family members repeatedly approached police and other officials, who denied that the person was detained, the report said.
While many of these men were eventually produced in court, after weeks or months of illegal detention, others were released with warnings to stay silent, it claimed. Several were later found dead in gunfights or cross-fire, and scores remain disappeared, it added.
Against the home ministers claim that the United Nations had never mentioned enforced disappearances, the HRW said that, in fact, like the detailed letters sent by the HRW requesting comment on these abuses, the Bangladesh government has ignored repeated queries from the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. The Human Rights Committee has also issued stern warnings to it.
The rights body also pointed out that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, while in the opposition, had repeatedly highlighted human rights violations and promised an end to it once she assumed office. However, even as her government nears the end of its second consecutive term, it has just followed its abusive predecessors.
The security forces are secretly detaining and killing the governments political opponents and critics, and those it believes to be criminals, the HRW has claimed.
The law enforcement authorities have illegally arrested and detained hundreds of people in secret since 2013, the HRW said in the report. It added that at least 90 people were victims of enforced disappearances last year alone, while 21 of the detainees were reportedly killed.
