Human rights organisations documenting abuses dedicated by the Bangladesh’s Fast Motion Battalion (RAB) have requested the United Nations to ban the unit’s members from its peace operations.
In a letter to Below-Secretary-Common for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix made public on Thursday, 12 human rights teams voiced concern “that people who’ve served with [RAB] are being despatched on UN missions, regardless of constant and credible proof of abuses together with extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances by members of this unit since its creation in 2004″.
Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights group, mentioned “the proof is evident; now it’s time for the UN to attract a line.”
Kennedy, whose organisation is without doubt one of the letter’s signatories, referred to as on the world physique to use the 2012 United Nations Coverage on Human Rights Screening of United Nations Personnel.
“If Secretary-Common Guterres is severe about ending human rights abuses by UN peacekeepers, he’ll be certain that models with confirmed information of abuse just like the Fast Motion Battalion are excluded from deployment,” she mentioned in an announcement.
The Division of Peacekeeping Operations has but to supply a proper response to the letter which was despatched on November 8.
Allegations of human rights abuses
RAB was created in 2004 to fight extremism and severe crimes within the nation of 169 million folks, however has been accused by rights teams of gross human rights violations, together with staging gunfights to kill alleged criminals.
Bangladesh is without doubt one of the prime troop and police contributors to UN peacekeeping.
In 2020, it was the very best contributor, deploying 6,731 uniformed personnel to varied missions.
RAB is legally accountable to the Dwelling Ministry, however the army has important affect and management over its actions, with army officers taking most of the most senior positions inside it.
NGOs have alleged that RAB and different Bangladeshi regulation enforcement are accountable for almost 600 extrajudicial killings since 2018.
Final month, RAB was designated by the US as a “international entity that’s accountable for or complicit in, or has instantly or not directly engaged in, severe human rights abuse” below the International Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
The Bangladesh authorities denied the allegations and referred to as within the US ambassador to protest sanctions towards its prime safety officers after seven folks, together with the nation’s nationwide police chief.
The UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances has voiced issues that “members of the RAB could be eligible to take part in UN peacekeeping operations, with none earlier investigation into their alleged involvement within the fee of human rights abuses or a radical vetting course of”.
The group additionally mentioned that officers concerned in or keen to tolerate abuses “seem like promoted and rewarded throughout the Bangladesh safety and regulation enforcement forces”.
Within the letter, the organisations expressed concern that “systematic screening is being utilized solely at greater ranks” and referred to as on the UN to make sure that all uniformed personnel are topic to systematic scrutiny of their particular person human rights report by evaluations impartial from the Bangladesh Nationwide Human Rights Fee.
“The NHRC can’t be goal and factual within the execution of their position within the screening course of contemplating ongoing experiences of its politicization,” the human rights teams, which embrace Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Worldwide, wrote within the joint letter.
“The federal government has continued in denying abuses and refuses to analyze allegations or maintain perpetrators accountable.”
Bangladesh’s international secretary Masud Bin Momen has defended RAB, describing it as an “company of the federal government that had been on the forefront of combating terrorism, drug trafficking and different heinous transnational crimes that have been thought-about to be shared priorities with successive US administrations”.
“If bringing down a prison below the regulation is a violation of human rights, then we now have no objection to violating this human rights within the curiosity of the nation,” he mentioned.