Saturday | 02/02/2013
Rohingya News Agency – (Human Rights Watch): Year Marked By Flawed Trials, Continued Impunity, Pressure on NGOs
(London) – Bangladesh’s human rights situation worsened in 2012 as the government sought to narrow political and civil society space, continued to shield security forces from prosecution for abuses, failed to investigate disappearances and killings, and announced stringent rules to monitor non-governmental organizations, Human Rights Watch said in its 2013 World Report released today.
(London) – Bangladesh’s human rights situation worsened in 2012 as the government sought to narrow political and civil society space, continued to shield security forces from prosecution for abuses, failed to investigate disappearances and killings, and announced stringent rules to monitor non-governmental organizations, Human Rights Watch said in its 2013 World Report released today.
In its 665-page report, Human Rights Watch
assessed progress on human rights during the past year in more than 90
countries, including an analysis of the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
The practice of disguising extrajudicial
killings as “crossfire” killings continued in Bangladesh, as did
disappearances of opposition members and political activists. A
prominent labor activist was kidnapped and killed, while other labor
activists were threatened. Civil society and human rights defenders also
reported increased pressure and monitoring.
“This government came to power promising
the end of extrajudicial killings, a liberal environment for activists
and critics, and an independent judiciary,”said Brad Adams, Asia
director at Human Rights Watch. “But the government no longer seems to
even be trying to achieve these goals.”
Human Rights Watch said that while
Bangladesh has a strong set of laws to tackle violence against women,
the implementation remains poor. Violence against women including rape,
dowry-related assaults, and other forms of domestic violence such as
acid attacks, sexual harassment, and illegal punishments in the name of
“fatwas” continue. Discriminatory personal laws continue to impoverish
many women at separation or divorce, and trap them in abusive marriages
for fear of destitution.
Workers in the lucrative tannery industry
continue to suffer physically from terrible conditions inside the
tanneries, Human Rights Watch said, causing both acute and long-term
hazardous health situations, while regulations to ameliorate these
conditions have gone unheeded.
One of the most disturbing trends in 2012
was increased pressure and monitoring of civil society. Non-governmental
organizations, including human rights groups, reported increased
threats, harassment, and intimidation. Several human rights groups,
particularly those openly critical of the government, reported problems
with registration and government blocking of funds for their projects.
Several leading labor rights activists continue to face criminal
charges, some of which carry a possible death sentence.
The government drafted a bill regulating
foreign donations which has the potential to legalize the already
arbitrary and non-transparent process by which the government regulates
the receipt of foreign funding. Although not yet passed, NGOs reported
that many of the cumbersome mechanisms in the bill were already being
put into practice. In August 2012, the government announced plans to
establish a new commission charged solely with regulating NGO
activities, in addition to the already existing NGO Affairs Bureau,
which continues to be accused of routine corruption by NGOs.
In 2012, Human Rights Watch welcomed a
decrease in extrajudicial killings by the notorious Rapid Action
Battalion (RAB), but the number of killings remained very high. Although
an internal investigative unit was set up in 2012 to inquire into and
prosecute RAB members, very little is known about what action, if any,
this unit has taken. Independent observers reported that the offenses
examined by the internal investigative unit are routine disciplinary
offenses, and that more serious allegations of extra-judicial summary
killings and disappearances remain unexamined.
“While government and RAB officials
claimed that they held abusers accountable, it is still a fact that no
RAB officer or senior official has ever been held criminally accountable
for any of the well-documented abductions, torture, or killings carried
out by RAB,” Adams said. “Even in the highly publicized case of the
shooting of the school boy Limon, no one has been charged, yet the
authorities continue to proceed with a flawed prosecution against him.”
Flawed trials against members of the
Bangladesh Rifles accused of mutineering in 2009 continued. Human Rights
Watch issued a report in July outlining credible allegations of
custodial torture and deaths, as well as mass trials in gross violation
of due process rights. Instead of investigating the allegations, the
government simply dismissed them, with the then Minister of Interior
flatly denying any abuses in a meeting with Human Rights Watch before
reading the report. The government insisted that trials against as many
as 800 accused at a time were procedurally sound, despite the fact that
many accused had no assistance of counsel and in many cases were unaware
of the charges laid against them. Many of these accused in ongoing
trials face the death sentence if found guilty.
Glaring violations of fair trial standards
became apparent in 2012 in the trials of the International Crimes
Tribunal (ICT), a wholly domestic court set up to try those accused of
war crimes during the 1971 war of independence. One of the present
government’s central campaign pledges in 2008 was to ensure that these
long overdue trials took place. Human Rights Watch has long called for
justice for victims in the 1971 liberation war. However, serious flaws
in the law and rules of procedure governing these trials have gone
unaddressed, despite proposals from the US government and many
international experts.
All the ICT trials underway in 2012 were
replete, with complaints from both the prosecution and defense. Each
side accused the other of witness intimidation. In one apparently
serious irregularity, the prosecution claimed that it was unable to
produce several of its witnesses and asked that written statements be
admitted as evidence, absent any direct or redirect examination. The
court granted the request despite the fact that the defense produced
government safe house logbooks which appeared to show that some of these
witnesses had been in the safe house and available to testify. In one
case, when on November 5 the defense attempted to bring one of these
witnesses, Shukho Ranjan Bali, to court, he was abducted from the gates
of the court house by police officers in a marked police van.
In December, The Economist published an
article detailing some hacked email and Skype conversations between the
chairman of the ICT and an external adviser based in Brussels. These
communications revealed longstanding prohibited contact between the
Chairman, the government, the prosecution, and the advisor. They showed
direct government interference in the operations of the ICT. The
publication of these communications caused the Chairman to resign,
leaving a bench in which none of the three judges has heard the totality
of the evidence against the accused. Motions for retrials in four of
the cases due to these communications were rejected by the tribunal,
calling into question its impartiality.
“The trials against the alleged mutineers
and the alleged war criminals are deeply problematic, riddled with
questions about the independence and impartiality of the judges and
fairness of the process,” Adams said. “This is tragic, as those
responsible for serious crimes could end up appearing to be victims of a
miscarriage of justice. By dismissing all criticism out of hand without
any real inquiry into them, the government shows it is more concerned
about winning votes than about following the rule of law.”
The government flouted its international
legal obligations in June 2012 when sectarian violence in Arakan state
in neighboring Burma led to an influx of Rohingya refugees into
Bangladesh. The government responded by pushing back boatloads of
refugees, insisting it had no obligation to provide sanctuary for them.
The government also curtailed the activities of NGOs operating in
pre-existing Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar.
“The government seems to view every
critic, including reputable domestic NGOs, as part of some vast
conspiracy to topple it, instead of organizations genuinely interested
in improving the country,” Adams said. “This attitude of ‘you’re either
with us or against us’ characterized its reaction to issues ranging from
the war crimes and mutiny trials to responsibility for factory fires
and labor rights.”
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