The Australia Awami League and Australia Jubo League have jointly lodged a formal objection to the “flawed and politically motivated” statements of the two Green Party senators on the Bangladesh government.
President of Australia Awami League Dr M Abul Hasnat Milton, and General Secretary of Australia Jubo League Muhammad Abdullah Al Noman issued the joint statement against Senator Janet Rice and Senator David Shoebridge, and asked them whether "the Australian people gave them the mandate to act as malicious propaganda instruments against foreign governments?"
Copies of this protest letter have been sent to the president of the Australian Senate, the Australian foreign minister and some other senators and members of the parliament.
They referred to Senator Shoebridge’s recent questions at the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee on 1 June 2023 regarding sanctioning the government of Bangladesh for alleged gross violations of human rights. They also referred to various statements in the context of asking questions in the Senate by Senator Rice between 2020 till now.
“On close examinations of the aforementioned questions and statements by both senators, it appears that there are striking similarities in the construction of wordings. Both senators fashionably started with an opinion about the Bangladesh Government, followed by their respective questions,” they observed in the 27-page research protest note.
They also documented the historical facts of Bangladesh and Amnesty International’s political bias in world affairs.
They asked the senators to visit Bangladesh, engage with the Bangladesh diaspora in Australia and understand the complex nature of the political history of Bangladesh before commenting.
Amnesty’s designation of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia as “prisoner of conscience” on account of her being the former prime minister of Bangladesh, irrespective of her being a convicted criminal, is yet another example of the human rights watchdog’s political bias, they said.
They presented the case of Australia’s Eddie Obeid as a comparison.
Former minister and member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, Eddie Obeid, is a 79 years old former Australian politician, and convicted criminal, who is serving prison time at present.
“Even Obeid’s legal team did not advance the contention of special treatment on account of his age, economic, political or social history. If the international community should allow such facts and contentions advanced by Amnesty International about Bangladesh’s former prime minister, or any other country for that matter, then these ideas of the rule of law in all countries of the world would collapse and the novelty of serving the people would no longer exist because then the world would see more criminals taking up political roles in order to protect themselves from probable future prosecutions.”
Following the finding of corruption, Obeid’s Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to ethnic welfare, was cancelled by the governor-general in 2014.
As a state minister and Member of the Legislative Council, Obeid’s entitlement to use the honorific "The Honorable" for life, despite Obeid argued for its retention, the then NSW Premier Mike Baird recommended to Governor David Hurley that the honorific be removed; which was authorized effective from December 2014.
“We respectfully ask the senators to examine the questions, a) why is it acceptable for Amnesty International to advocate for one convicted-criminal-former-politician in one country and not do so for another in a different country? b) if the senators are convinced of the bias of Amnesty International, would they be willing to make public statements that they withdraw their reference to reports made by Amnesty International?” they asked in the protest note.