HRDB NEWSLETTER

Human Rights and Development for Bangladesh Newsletter / 1-15

November 2015

7 questions any civilized

person should ask Hasina
Government in Bangladesh
The human rights situation has perhaps never been worse certainly not since the return of democracy in 1990. As Human
Rights Watch has recently put it: the country has a large number of chronic and serious human rights violations which fly
under the radar on the global scene.
1. Media Freedom
The country's military intelligence
DGFI, which the prime minister controls, has ordered the major telecommunications and consumer companies
to stop advertising by in the country's
two leading independent newspapers,
The Daily Star and Prothom Alo.

How can Hasina government expect people to accept the credibility

of the investigations into this murder when the their basis is totally
illegal, and secret detentions provides rampant opportunity for torture to take place, raising serious
questions about any confessions
that they make?

4. Widespread secret detentions

What Hasina government is going to

do to stop this significant infringeThe secret detentions of the five men in
ment of the freedom of the media
Cesare Tavella case appears to be just
and intimidation of these papers?
the tip of an iceberg of secret detentions that are reported to be taking
place throughout the country. For ex2. Disappearances
ample, it has been reported that the
During a single two week period, in the UK citizen, Samiun Rahman, accused
last year by the police of being an IS
country's capital city, just before the
recruiter, was apparently secretly deJanuary 2014 election, law enforcement officials picked up 19 BNP oppo- tained for a week before being brought
before the media; and another British
sition activists in seven separate incidents. Their whereabouts two years on citizen, Tawhidur Rahman, accused of
involvement in the blogger killings, was
continue to remain unknown.
secretly and illegally detained for three
months before being presented to
Where are these disappeared men?
court.
Are they still in detention or have they
been killed? And under whose instructions were they picked up and illegally What actions Hasina Governand secretly detained?
ment is going to take to stop the

3. Recent secret detentions - the

Cesare Tavella Case
Law enforcement agencies have now
arrested five men in relation to the killing of the Italian NGO worker Cesare
Tavella, but in each case family and
independent eye witnesses claim that
the men were picked up between 10
and 15 days before - and secretly and
illegally detained during that period before they were presented to the media (and the courts).

widespread use of secret detentions?

5. Extra-judicial killings

Extra judicial killings continue to take

place - in which investigations suggest
that the law enforcement authorities
are simply killing people who are in
their detention, and pretending that
they are simply 'gun-fights'.
Why is there no independent investigations into these killings?

November 2015

Human Rights and Development for Bangladesh Newsletter / 1-15

6. Battering the opposition

The current government has done everything to weaken and destabilize the main
opposition parties - even going so far as to
blame them for all the recent killings in
Bangladesh, claimed by the Islamic state
and others. Apart from the disappearances,
and the extra-judicial killings mentioned
above, almost every significant senior opposition leader has been accused of a
criminal offense - are they are now in jail ,
in hiding, or face arrest. There has also
been widespread mass arrests of thousands of opposition activists. The opposition parties, the BNP and the Jamaat, are
unable to operate at all as political parties.

When will Hasina government stop the

persecution of the opposition parties,
and allow democratic participation to
take place in the country?

7. Elections
It is generally accepted that the controversial 2014 elections, which were boycotted
by the main opposition parties (after the
government removed the constitutional
provisions for an election period caretaker
government) provide only limited democratic legitimacy to the current government.
There were widespread irregularities in the
Upazilla and City Corporation elections
which have taken place since then. The
election commission is widely perceived to
lack independence from the government
How Hasina government is going to
ensure that the next national elections
are going to be free and fair?

Bangadesh govt becoming

increasingly authoritarian: HRW
Human Rights Watch accused the Bangladesh government of heading down
an increasingly authoritarian path in an intervention before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday.
Philippe Dam, deputy director of the international rights organisation in Geneva, told the UN Council that since January 2014 disappearances and arbitrary arrests of opposition party members, closing down critical media, and
arresting and charging editors and bloggers, journalists and civil society
members have become more common.
The statement said, Thousands of opposition members and protesters were
arrested, and unknown numbers remain in custody. Many opposition leaders
have chosen to leave the country or go into hiding.
The statement went onto criticise the countrys security forces, whose extrajudicial killings and other frequent abuses have been independently documented over successive governments, continue to enjoy near total impunity.
In an interview with the Guardian, published on Monday, prime minister
Sheikh Hasina rejected accusations of authoritarian rule. All the democratic
institutions are working and people are satisfied and people are enjoying it,
she said.
Philippe Dam told New Age that the rights watchdog focused on Bangladesh
in its three minute intervention before the 30th meeting of the UN human
rights body as the country had a large number of chronic and serious human
rights violations which fly under the radar on the global scene.
Philippe said, We feel that international attention is needed to address all
these concerns, [and] that the Bangladesh government has shown no capacity or political will to address these issues.
The statement, broadcast live on the internet, also criticised the governments failure in taking sufficient steps to protect bloggers expressing atheist
sentiments, leading to the brutal murders of four bloggers in 2015 alone.
Although the Bangladesh government had an opportunity to respond before
the Human Rights Council, it did not do so.

From an article written by David Bergman.

Original article was abridged and edited.
David Bergman is a Bangladesh based
journalist
http://
bangladeshpolitico.blogspot.ca/2015/11/
the-seven-questions-netherlands-pm.html

September 23: http://newagebd.net/160320/hrw-accuses-govt-of-becomingincreasingly-authoritarian/#sthash.6e8apt7w.dpuf

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Human Rights and Development for Bangladesh (HRDB) / email: humanrightsbd@gmail.com