Some 200 men were killed in the first two months of a crackdown on Bangladesh’s thriving drug trade, launched on May 3 by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Anti-drug raids have also led to 16,000 arrests and 4,000 convictions, according to Bangladesh Ministry of Information figures, sparking concerns among human rights activists about the large number of fatalities and the swift conviction of suspects
We have a government with no sense of accountability and it is also not known who decide policies. There is nobody in the government who cares to asks, if others ask then it is unimportant, how drugs got spread as good money making business. Where were the RAB, police and the Ministers under whose nose drugs business flourished as a protected business.
The government thinks killing persons without recourse to law and judicial process can be the easiest solution to the drugs business. “Killing is not the major agenda of these drives,” said Minister of Information Hasanul Haq Inu. He said that deaths occur when suspects become violent during raids and that authorities were investigating every death.”The government is working within the parameters of the law,” he said.
But the number of deaths and arrests has drawn scrutiny. In one neighborhood in the capital, Dhaka, in late May, officers from the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite police force, arrested 153 people in two hours. Among those arrested were barbers, tailors and students, some while lazing in bed.
A month later, officers came back with sniffer dogs and AK-47 rifles and carted away 51 people; 18 were convicted. Concerns have been raised that the latest anti-drug drives are a front for a campaign of extrajudicial killings. International bodies have called on Bangladesh to reconsider how the police operations are being conducted.”I am gravely concerned that such a large number of people have been killed,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a statement.
Similarly allegations against the Bangladesh Police of inflicting torture on persons in custody is nothing new. According to Ain O Salish Kendra, in 2017, 53 people lost their lives in custody; 20 among them were convicts and 33 were detainees. In the first half of 2018, 25 people, 14 of whom were detainees, have reportedly died in police custody. For instance, on March 12 this year, Chhatra Dal leader Jakir Hossain died in prison after spending three days in remand.
It is one thing for the police to fulfil its duties but they must know they are not outside the jurisdiction of the court. The police are not the courts to justify their own killings. Orders of higher authority are no defence. The police cannot be free killers and remain police. They will be seen as killers. The police justified killings of alleged terrorists without court cases by saying they are armed terrorists.
It cannot be said with any justification that drug dealers of our country are organised armed people. The big drug dealers are mostly politically protected, so they were not organised armed people. There was no need for killing them. Any honest effort would be enough to haul them up for trial.
Lawless killing is ominous for the government and for society. Everybody in government is obsessed with a sense of foolish impunity. Too many persons in the government are getting about use of violence sending the message for all that gun power is the only power that counts, not law or justice system.
The government’s audacity for lawlessness is provoking lawless elements to feel free and be dangerous. We have a government famous for being impervious to warning from others. We are going to get more and more violent society.
