The Bangladesh government risks making the country’s situation worse by giving police “carte blanche to use excessive force” in response to bomb attacks, Amnesty International (AI) has said.
In a press statement issued on Thursday, the rights group quoted media reports of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina saying: “as the head of the government I am giving [the police] the liberty to take any action wherever and whenever it will be deemed necessary” to stop arson.
“Remarks like these carry a high risk of being seen as an open invitation for the police to use unnecessary and excessive force against demonstrators or even to carry out extrajudicial executions – which Bangladeshi security forces have carried out with appalling frequency in the past,” said Abbas Faiz, Amnesty International Bangladesh Researcher.
The statement went on to say: “International human rights law protects the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, but the manner in which the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led protests are being carried out clearly shows a repeated pattern of violence being used for a political purpose.”
“The BNP should exhort their members and supporters to stop these politically-motivated criminal acts, which should be dealt with in fair procedures under the criminal law,” Abbas said.
Since the opposition BNP imposed a transport blockade in the country on January 5, more than two dozen people have been killed and hundreds injured, some seriously.
More than a dozen people have been killed in recent operations by the police, including the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite force accused of numerous human rights violations in the past, the press statement said.
Ten of the recent deaths occurred in what police termed “shootouts” between January 12 and 28, it said.
“These deaths during police operations – some of which may amount to extrajudicial executions – must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible brought to justice. The security forces have a duty to maintain law and order, but that does not place them above the law and it is never an excuse to resort to excessive use of force,” said Abbas.
