No justice after police killings in Bangladesh: Amnesty

(May 24, 2012) In Bangladesh, at least one person a week died in 2011 at the hands of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) police unit, Amnesty International said in a report released on Wednesday. Despite a government pledge to end extrajudicial killings, law enforcement agents have not been adequately brought to justice for deaths or beatings, the London-based international human rights watchdog said in its annual State of the World’s Human Rights Report. “In many cases, family members told Amnesty that victims died after being arrested by the RAB and not in an encounter as the RAB claimed. The authorities failed to investigate these incidents credibly,” the report said in its Bangladesh chapter. RAB officers allegedly killed at least 54 people in 2011, bringing the total number of people killed by the group since 2004, when the RAB was formed, to more than 700, the report said. The rights group also said the government has also failed to prevent confiscation of tribal peoples’ land by Bengali settlers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Tribal people told Amnesty delegates visiting the area in March that Bengali settlers, emboldened by the army’s tolerance of their actions, had set fire to tribal homes, usually in clear sight of soldiers or other law enforcement personnel, without being stopped.
One bright spot for Bangladesh could have been the new National Women Development Policy, a plan to provide medical treatment, legal assistance and counselling to abused women and children. However, Amnesty reported that authorities failed to implement the plan and many female and young victims of violence were receiving no support from state institutions. Overall, Amnesty’s report painted a grim portrait of rights abuses around the world.