Home Minister questions credibility of US State Department report
PBC News: Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has questioned the credibility of a US State Department report on the abuse of power by law enforcement agencies in Bangladesh.
“The report contains discrepancies in information,” he said at a press conference at his office in the Secretariat on Wednesday.
“They (US State Department) is supposed to collect more information before publishing the report on Bangladesh’s human rights situation. I think that there were discrepancies in the information of the report,” he said.
“This allegation is probably from 2021, not 2022. Our records don’t match with the number of disappearances and killings provided in the US report,” he claimed.
The home minister said that an executive magistrate investigates all gunfights involving the security forces of the nation.
“If it is found that the law enforcers open fire in self-defense, the investigation doesn’t proceed. And if the executive magistrate thinks the incident is wrong or careless, we send the case to the judiciary,” Kamal explained.
He also pointed fingers at the US State Department for “misrepresenting” facts in their report, mentioning that no one is above justice in Bangladesh.
The minister also said that many of the missing persons deliberately went into hiding for issues, such as, loss in business or family feud. “We rescued many of them. So, we can firmly say that the report which has been published contains misinformation.”
Earlier in the day, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam also criticised the US Human Rights Report 2021.
He said that the report contained some “misinformation” and is collected primarily from the “anti-government propaganda machines”.
The US State Department released the 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, an annual report required by US law on April 12.
The report said that there were reports of widespread impunity for abuses and corruption by the Bangladeshi security forces — encompassing the military, national police, border guards, and counterterrorism units such as the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).
“The government took few measures to investigate and prosecute cases of corruption and abuse and killing by security forces,” reads the report launched by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday (April 12).
According to the findings of the report, the significant human rights issues in Bangladesh include credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; forced disappearance; torture or cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government or its agents on behalf of the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrests or detentions; political prisoners; politically motivated reprisals against individuals in another country; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary and arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy.
