This is the third of five open letters that the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) feels compelled to write to the UN Human Rights Council about the horrible human rights situation in Bangladesh, and its causes. We are doing this as we are deeply concerned for the integrity and credibility of the Council if Bangladesh is permitted to sit as a member for the coming three years as intended.
In our first letter we pointed to the failure of the Government of Bangladesh to separate the judiciary and executive, despite 15 years of promises to do so, and the consequent denial of redress for victims of rights abuses there. In our second letter we took up the failure of the government to criminalise torture, and the unnecessary suffering that this imposes upon the many victims of cruel and inhuman treatment and torture by the police and other security forces in Bangladesh.
In our third letter we wish to raise the unabated extrajudicial killings committed by the police and special paramilitary units throughout Bangladesh, and the practice of granting impunity to state officers who commit murder.
As noted in our previous letter, the Government of Bangladesh has bragged to the UN about its joining many international human rights treaties. Among these, the first on its list is the Convenant on Civil and Political Rights. Among the rights enshrined in the Covenant, none is more valuable than the right to life: and yet, in recent years the state security forces in Bangladesh have spread terror throughout the country by murdering an ever-increasing number of people without fear of consequences. The government for its part has sanctioned, enabled and encouraged these killings apparently without fear of sanction from the international community.
In 2002 the Government of Bangladesh launched the notorious Operation Clean Heart. Ostensibly to crackdown on crime, the operation resulted in the arrest of thousands of poor and innocent persons, and the deaths of many in a term that has since become chillingly familiar to people throughout the country: “crossfire”. This term is used to describe an extrajudicial killing which is organised by the police or other officers to look like an encounter killing with armed bandits or other persons. In 2003, the government granted absolute impunity to all of the police and other state agents responsible for killings, assaults, illegal arrests throughout Clean Heart: an action that was condemned by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. By 2004, the operation had spawned a body of paramilitary units called Rapid Action Battalions, comprised of both police and soldiers. The name “Rapid Action Battalion” is now synonymous with “crossfire”: these units are deployed across the country without any other agenda than to do the bidding of their political masters. They kill, maim, illegally detain and spread fear wherever they go.
Take the case of Harun-ur-Rashid and Aslam Hossain, who were arrested by the Rapid Action Battalion in Dhaka on 14 July 2006. They were handed over to another unit in Jessore and on July 16 were killed in “crossfire”. In a familiar story, the unit responsible said that the two men had admitted to keeping illegal arms at places outside the town. In the early morning of July 16 they had taken the two men to two different places to obtain two caches of weapons where in two different incidents they had had two encounters with the two men’s associates, twice had returned fire and each of the victims had died in turn when he attempted to flee. Other sources have alleged that the battalion had been bargaining with the relatives of the two men in exchange for their lives but the families had been unable or unwilling to produce enough money and so they were killed.
Multitudes have been murdered, without possibility of complaint or redress, in the same pattern: arrest, obtain “information” about illegal arms or other wrongdoing at a certain location; go to the place; meet bandits or insurgents; victim flees and happens to be shot dead in crossfire. Some token illegal weapons or other evidence is “retrieved” to prove the case. End of story.
The Rapid Action Battalions are in effect an admission by the Government of Bangladesh that under its administration, the rule of law–to whatever extent it once existed–has collapsed. But in response, rather than try to probe the causes for that collapse and seriously address the institutional problems one at a time, the state has instead chosen to respond to lawlessness with lawlessness. The consequence is further death and distress for the people of Bangladesh, and further decline in public confidence or expectations in the rule of law and human rights there.
The AHRC seriously doubts that the Government of Bangladesh has any interest to uphold the right to life as it has committed to do in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Had it any intention to do so, it would not have indemnified the perpetrators of gross abuses in 2002 from wrongdoing. It also would not have followed the bloody Clean Heart operation with the Rapid Action Battalions, which have spread confusion and mayhem to all corners of the country and have tipped off a killing contest with the regular armed police. As a result, untold numbers of victims like Harun-ur-Rashid and Aslam Hossain are daily being slain while their families, rather than struggling for justice, are cowed and reluctant to complain about their deaths, knowing the power of the perpetrators and the patent inability of the executive-controlled judiciary to afford them any redress.
The Government of Bangladesh has pledged that it would “remain prepared to be reviewed under the universal periodic review mechanism during its tenure in the Council”. The Asian Human Rights Commission for a third time urges the Council to call on that pledge, and review the status of Bangladesh as a member of the Council as soon as the means is established to do so. The failure of the government to address the wanton extrajudicial killings that it has provoked is inexcusable. It is daily causing misery to the people of Bangladesh and further eroding their confidence in all aspects of administration and justice in their country. It is the characteristic not of a country that deserves to be lauded for its human rights commitments but rather the characteristic of country that is a human rights charlatan. The people of Bangladesh know this. It is time that the international community woke up to the same truth.
I request that your office transmit this letter to all members of the Council for their consideration.
Yours sincerely
Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
