Dhaka, Aug 23 (
bdnews24.com)—An international rights group has called for a freeze on arms supplies to the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and other Bangladeshi security forces to stop them being used for extralegal killings and violating human rights.
Bangladesh's police and RAB continue to receive a wide range of military and police equipment from overseas, including from Austria, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Turkey and USA, the UK-based Amnesty International said in a new report released on Wednesday.
"Any country that knowingly sends arms or other supplies to equip a force which systematically violates human rights may itself bear some responsibility for those violations."
It called on the government afresh to fulfil its election pledges and draw an end to 'hundreds of killings' in so-called 'crossfire' or 'gun-fight' by the force.
In the latest report
Crimes Unseen: Extrajudicial Executions in Bangladesh , the organisation said that the elite crime busters had been justifying these killings as 'accidental' or as a result of officers acting in self-defence, "although in reality many victims are killed following their arrest".
It said, "Any country that knowingly sends arms or other supplies to equip a force which systematically violates human rights may itself bear some responsibility for those violations."
On May 13, the Amnesty International in its annual report 2011 said the Awami League government failed to fulfil its pledge to end extrajudicial executions.
Successive Bangladeshi governments had promised to end the RAB's use of murder.
The AI report had come three days after the New York-based Human Rights Watch made the same allegation against the government and described the RAB as a government death squad.
RAB officers were trained in the UK, according to a US embassy cable leaked by the WikiLeaks in Dec last year.
At least 200 alleged RAB killings have occurred since January 2009 when the current Awami League-led government came to power, despite the prime minister's pledge to end extrajudicial executions and "claims by the authorities that no extrajudicial executions were carried out in the country in this period".
In addition, at least 30 people have been killed in other police operations since early 2010, with the police also portraying them as deaths in "shoot-outs" or "gun-fights", Amnesty said.
Bangladesh's two main political parties – the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League – have shown no commitment to limiting the powers of RAB.
In the first couple of months of coming to office, the Prime Minister spoke of a "zero tolerance" policy toward extrajudicial executions. Other government authorities repeated her pledge. These hopes were dashed in late 2009 when the authorities, including the Home Minister, began to claim that there were no extrajudicial executions in the country.
"Hardly a week goes by in Bangladesh without someone being shot by RAB with the authorities saying they were killed or injured in 'crossfire' or a 'gun-fight'. However the authorities choose to describe such incidents, the fact remains that they are suspected unlawful killings," said Abbas Faiz, the organisation's Bangladesh Researcher.
The force has been implicated in the killing of at least 700 people since its inception in 2004. It is a composite force comprising members from the military -- army, air force, and navy -- the police, and members of Bangladesh's other law enforcement groups.
The rights group said, "Any investigations that have been carried out into those killed have either been handled by RAB or by a government-appointed judicial body but the details of their methodology or findings have remained secret. They have never resulted in judicial prosecution."
RAB has "consistently denied responsibility for unlawful killings and the authorities have accepted those claims".
Faiz said, "It is appalling that virtually all alleged instances of illegal RAB killings have gone unchallenged or unpunished. There can be no justice if the force is the chief investigator of its own wrong-doings. Such investigations cannot be impartial. There is nothing to stop the RAB from destroying the evidence and engineering the outcome."
Former detainees also told Amnesty International how they were routinely tortured in custody, suffering beatings, food and sleep deprivation, and electric shocks.
"By failing to take proper judicial action against RAB, successive Bangladeshi governments have effectively endorsed the force's claims and conduct and given it carte blanche to act with impunity. All we have seen from the current government are broken promises or worse, outright denial," said Abbas Faiz.
In many cases the investigations blamed the victims, calling them criminals and portraying their deaths as justified even though available public evidence refuted that.
"The Bangladesh authorities must act now and take concrete steps to protect people from the alleged unlawful killings by their security forces .The government must ensure independent and impartial in