[ALOCHONA] AI concerned over rights violations in Bangladesh

AI concerned over rights violations in Bangladesh

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International (AI) observed that the law enforcers, especially Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and police were being used for violating human rights of people in Bangladesh, especially those have no power.

Arbitrary detention and extra-judicial killings were carried out by RAB and police in Bangladesh, the report said. Custodial deaths also occurred in police custody while RAB continue to engage excessive force in its activities.

The report also highlighted the government's failure to protect Jumma inhabitants, indigenous people of the Chittagong hill tracts from being attacked by Bangalee settlers.

"At least two Jumma Indigenous people were killed on 20 February after the Army, which maintained a heavy presence in the area, opened fire on hundreds of Jumma indigenous demonstrators. They were holding peacefully demonstration demanding of their protection after Bengalee settlers had set fire to at least 40 of their houses," the report said.

"There was no report of investigation or anyone being prosecuted for the attacks and the killings," the report continued.Impunity, death penalty, violence against women and girls, and ill-treatment of people by the law enforcers were the other points, the report mentioned.

Even though the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution was declared unlawful, no scope was created for investigating human rights violation, against which the amendment had emerged as a protection, the Amnesty International (AI) has said about Bangladesh.

"In February, the Supreme Court (SC) upheld a judgement of High Court (HC) in 2005 that declared the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution unlawful. The ruling did not provide new scope for investigation of human rights violations committed between August 1975 and April 1979," said the 2011 report on the state of the world's human rights.

The Fifth Amendment in 1979 ratified all actions including martial law proclamations and orders as well as the changes in the basic structure of the Constitution made during the period between August 15, 1975 and April 9, 1979, immediately after Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed by some disgruntled army officers on August 15, 1975.

With regards to global human rights condition, the report observed that the numbers of executions carried out around the world has been jumped, largely due to increase number of the death penalty in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The rights group said at least 676 people were executed in 20 countries in 2011 compared with 527 executions in 23 countries in 2010 and  a 78 percent rise, the report added.

The confirmed executions in the Middle East are 558 and it rose by almost 50 percent, it said in an annual report on the death penalties.

Methods of execution used around the world included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.

However, Amnesty International said China executed more people than the rest of the world put together. Data on the death penalties in China is a state secret and Amnesty International could no longer publish a figure for Chinese executions, but it said it would be thousands.

After China, most executions last year were carried out in Iran, where at least 360 people were put to death compared with at least 252 in 2010, Saudi Arabia (at least 82 executions in 2011 compared with at least 27 in 2010), and Iraq (at least 68 executions compared in 2011 with at least one in 2010), Amnesty said.

They were followed by the United States, with 43 executions in 2011 down from 46 a year earlier, and Yemen, at least 41 executions in 2011 down from 62 officially in 2010.

http://www.theindependentbd.com/national/102066-ai-concerned-over-rights-violations-in-bangladesh.html

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