Bangladesh is sending its death squads for the United Nations’ peacekeeping missions, according to a report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR).
The human rights watchdog released the report, titled “Bangladesh: Sending Death Squad to Keep the UN’s Peace” yesterday, at a time when Hervé Ladsous, the UN’s under secretary general for Peacekeeping Operations, is visiting Bangladesh.
In a press release issued yesterday, Suhas Chakma, director of the ACHR, said: “The crossfire is a blatant cover up for extrajudicial executions by Rapid Action Battalion. Since its inception in 2004, numerous deaths were caused by these supposed crossfires with criminal gangs and terrorist groups.”
The ACHR called upon the UN to strictly implement the Human Rights Screening of United Nations Personnel Policy of December 2012 to bar deployment of such violators with the UN peacekeeping missions.
The report said the Bangladeshi troops sent for UN peacekeeping missions include the Bangladesh Army personnel who are posted in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, as well as members of RAB, the elite force that has been declared ineligible to receive technical assistance from the US under the Leahy Law, because of its involvement with gross human rights violations.
The report claimed that Bangladesh Army personnel murdered at least 70 suspects of the 2009 Bangladesh Rifles Mutiny at Pilkhana in their custody, while RAB were responsible for extrajudicial killing of 776 people in alleged crossfire between January 2004 and June 2013.
The ACHR also observed in the report that the UN postings of Bangladesh Army as systematically monopolised – 93% of the peacekeepers deployed from Bangladesh are from the army, while the remaining 7% are from Bangladesh Police, Navy and Air Force.
The report claimed that denial of opportunities to serve in the UN missions was one of the main reasons for the BDR revolt, in which a total of 74 people, including 57 army officers, were massacred.