Bangladesh slams US human rights report

DHAKA (AA) – Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry criticized a US human rights country report on the South Asian nation, saying the sources of the report are questionable and it also contains a few factual errors.

“For example, though we do not endorse their information, the Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) mentioned 275 extrajudicial killings (in Bangladesh) in the January-May 2018 period, while the US report wrongly cited ASK in mentioning that there were 606 extrajudicial killings in May-June 2018,” said the statement.

The Ain o Salish Kendra is a local rights watchdog that frequently publishes reports on human rights violations in Bangladesh.

The US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the US Department of State published a report on the human rights situation in Bangladesh titled Bangladesh 2021 Human Rights Report.

It focused on reported extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests of government critics and rights abuses against Rohingya refugees.

Referring to the US report, all mainstream media in Bangladesh have picked up on the issue and massively circulated it in the last couple of days while opposition political parties have slammed the government based on the report.

In reviewing the impacts of the report, the Foreign Ministry in its formal reaction has denied the charges and raised questions about the report’s credibility, saying it contains some factual errors and unconfirmed figures.

Underlining that Bangladesh is a country of over 167 million people with “enormous people-centric development,” the statement noted that the US report was critical about the status of the prohibition of forced labor but “didn’t highlight how Bangladesh is progressively realizing labor rights.”

The report came from a side that ratified only two out of eight fundamental conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO), whereas Bangladesh ratified all eight conventions, it added.

The statement also said the tendency to impose the values of a few select countries like lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights and same sex marriage in the name of human rights violations was “regrettable” and uncalled for.

“No act of arrest by the law enforcement agencies goes unaccountable bypassing the magistrate of the court,” the statement said.

“In each case, the magistrate decides whether an arrest is lawful or not. Therefore, the law enforcers don’t enjoy the immunity of commissioning ‘Arbitrary Arrest,'” it added

On the Rohingya rights abuses mentioned in the US report, the statement added that the US surprisingly mentioned a few Rohingya cases without adequate acknowledgement that Bangladesh “continues to remain supportive of an environment respectful of the basic rights and well-being of Rohingyas, despite not being a party to the 1951 Convention” relating to the Status of Refugees.