No rule of law in Bangladesh, says BNP MP Rumeen

GBNEWS24 DESK//

BNP MP Rumeen Farhana alleged in Parliament on Wednesday that police stations in the country do not want to register complaints of families of those who are subjected to enforced disappearances for lack of rule of law in the country.

Speaking on a cut-motion on Law Ministry, she said three people — trader Noman, madrasa student Nasim and mosque Imam Shahidul in Narayanganj’s Araihazar — remained missing for nearly a month.

Having failed to get any cooperation from local police stations, Rumeen said the family members of the three missing men held a press conference in the capital seeking the whereabouts of their near ones. “Nothing can be known yet about their whereabouts and there’s no discussion about it since they aren’t celebrities.”

She said Bangladesh was supposed to present a report on the country’s human rights situation to the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) in 1999, but the report was placed nearly 20 years later under immense pressure.

She said CAT expressed deep concern over the incidents enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killing, torture, snatching individual’s freedom, taking bribes and some other issues of Bangladesh after the report was submitted.

Besides, the BNP female MP said a report of the US State Department says that the government or its agents are involved in extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance and torture on people while journalists and others are being harassed and arrested willfully.

She said the UN and other international rights bodies repeatedly urged the government to take specific steps to prevent repression and violation of human rights by the law enforcers. “A few months back they made the same call.”

Rumeen said every incident of enforced disappearance, repression on Hefazat activists, taking confessional statements by force, extrajudicial killing, torture on common people by law enforcers are crimes against humanity. “These incidents also manifest how a state has collapsed.”