Zabaniyah
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Amnesty Int'l urges arms supplying countries over extra-judicial killing
Staff Correspondent
Amnesty International has called upon all countries to stop supplying arms to Bangladesh citing that they will be used by Rapid Action Battalion and other law enforcement agencies to commit extrajudicial killings.
An AI report yesterday said since inception in 2004, Rab has been implicated in the unlawful killing of at least 700 people including about 200 after the Awami League-led government assumed power. It said the party had pledged before elections that it would bring the extrajudicial executions to an end.
The UK-based human rights watchdog in the report released last night, titled Crimes Unseen: Extrajudicial executions in Bangladesh, made the recommendation to the international community as the government reportedly refuses to stop extrajudicial killings. It claimed the government consistently denies stopping this despite repeated appeals from national and international rights bodies including AI.
In Amnesty International's view, any country that knowingly sends arms or other supplies to equip a force which systematically violates human rights may itself bear some responsibility for those violations, read the last lines of the report.
AI mentioned 11 countries that continue to supply Bangladesh a wide range of police and military equipment including pistols, machine guns, toxic agents (like teargas), grenade launchers and helicopters. The countries include Austria, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Turkey and the USA.
As an example of foreign assistance to Rab, the report mentioned the Wikileaks leak of US diplomatic cables that divulged training of Rab by UK police.
On different occasions, the AI urged the government to stop extrajudicial killings while the New York-based Human Rights Watch in May asked the government to have Rab reformed in six months or disband it altogether.
The report said all hopes of extrajudicial executions coming to an end vanished in late 2009 when the government, including its home minister, denied that there were extrajudicial killings going on in the country.
This denial has shielded Rab from justice, and released the prime minister from her pledge. It amounts to a renewed lease of impunity for Rab, said the report.
Impunity for Rab seems to have created an environment in which other security agencies, such as the police, found the scope to follow Rab's footsteps knowing that accountability can be avoided, observed the report. It said since early 2010 police killed 30 people, portraying them as shootouts, gunfights or crossfire just like Rab does.
However, these remain suspected extrajudicial executions, said the report which was made following AI interviews of 20 victims in June.
The report also blamed police for helping Rab distort records, covering up the human rights violations, biased investigations of such killings and not letting victims file cases against Rab.
Rab is a unit of police.
Instead of blaming even a single Rab personnel, investigations conducted by Rab and the government always end up calling the victims criminals and portraying the deaths as justified, said the report.
By failing to take proper judicial action against Rab, successive Bangladeshi governments have effectively endorsed the force's claims and conduct and given it carte blanche to act with impunity. All we have seen from the current government are broken promises or worse, outright denial, said Amnesty International's Bangladesh researcher in Dhaka Abbas Faiz in a press release.
Inspector General of Police Hassan Mahmood Khandker told The Daily Star last night that he is unable to comment on the AI report since he has not read it or seen it.
Source: No arms for Bangladesh
This is a pretty serious issue.
They are right about the various human rights abuses by RAB. But saying no arms for Bangladesh is kinda premature. It the policy makers and politicians who need to be held accountable. Guns are just tools. Also, Bangladesh manufactures a limited range of fire-arms itself.
