DHAKA: The death toll from Bangladesh’s contentious war on drugs since May has hit 200, a local rights group said Tuesday, with some 25,000 others imprisoned.
Bangladesh launched the crackdown to smash the surging trade in “yaba,” a cheap methamphetamine and caffeine pill, which authorities say has spread to almost every village and town.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan has said the “war” will last until the narcotics trade is brought under control, saying those killed are all involved in at least 10 drugs crimes.
But rights groups say that many of the victims are shot by police in cold blood and that the onslaught was in part being used as a cover to settle scores.
In June the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said he was “gravely concerned” that “such a large number of people” had died.
Official declarations that none of the victims was innocent were “dangerous... and indicative of a total disregard for the rule of law,” a UN statement said.
Bangladesh’s state-run National Human Rights Commission has also expressed alarm.
“It is unprecedented in Bangladesh. So many people have been killed in such a short period of time,” Sheepa Hafiza, executive director of Ain o Salish Kendra rights group, said.
“This is very unfortunate. We condemn these extrajudicial killings and want fair investigations into each of these killings,” she said.
Around 25,000 alleged drug dealers have been arrested, home ministry spokesman Sharif Mahmud Apu said.
The prison population has shot up to 89,589 people, almost two and a half times higher than the system’s capacity, he said.
Last month the killing of a border town councilor in an anti-drug raid sparked outcry when his wife went public with tapes that she says prove her husband was murdered in a set-up.
Ayesha Begum says phone conversations she recorded with Akramul Haque on the night he died contradict the official narrative that he was armed and shot at police who returned fire in self-defense.
“They killed him in cold blood,” Begum said from Teknaf in southeast Bangladesh, where her husband was gunned down May 27.
Bangladesh has struggled to contain the trade in “yaba,” with hundreds of millions of pills entering the country from Myanmar.
Authorities last year seized a record 40 million pills but said an estimated 250-300 million more entered the market.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs since coming to power in 2016 has left thousands of people dead and prompted allegations of crimes against humanity.
Sri Lanka has also expressed interest in emulating Duterte, announcing plans to deploy the army and start hanging drug criminals, ending a near-half century moratorium on capital punishment.
Bangladesh drug war death toll hits 200 — rights group
Bangladesh drug war death toll hits 200 — rights group
- Around 25,000 alleged drug dealers have been arrested, home ministry spokesman Sharif Mahmud Apu said
- Authorities last year seized a record 40 million pills but said an estimated 250-300 million more entered the market
US warns UK to stop arresting Palestine Action supporters
- Undersecretary of state for diplomacy: Arrests doing ‘more harm than good’ and ‘censoring’ free speech
- Group was banned in July 2025 after series of break-ins
LONDON: UK authorities should stop arresting protesters showing support for banned group Palestine Action, the White House has warned.
The US undersecretary of state for diplomacy said arrests are doing “more harm than good” and are “censoring” free speech.
Sarah Rogers told news site Semafor: “I would have to look at each individual person and each proscribed organization. I think if you support an organization like Hamas, then depending upon whether you’re coordinating, there are all these standards that get applied.
“This Palestine Action group, I’ve seen it written about. I don’t know what it did. I think if you just merely stand up and say, ‘I support Palestine Action’, then unless you are really coordinating with some violent foreign terrorist, I think that censoring that speech does more harm than good.”
So far, more than 2,000 people have been arrested in the UK for showing support for the group.
It was banned in July 2025 after a series of break-ins nationwide, including at a facility owned by a defense manufacturer and a Royal Air Force base, during which military aircraft were damaged.
Last year, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was among those arrested while protesting for Palestine Action.
The group is challenging its ban, saying it should not be compared to terrorist organizations such as the Irish Republican Army, Daesh or Al-Qaeda.
The ban has been criticized by numerous bodies, with Amnesty International calling it a case of “problematic, overly broad and draconian restrictions on free speech.”
In Scotland, prosecutors have been offering to drop charges against some protesters in return for accepting a fine of £100 ($134.30).
Adam McGibbon, who was arrested at a demonstration in Edinburgh last year, refused the offer, saying: “The fact that the authorities are offering fines equivalent to a parking ticket for a ‘terrorism offence’ shows just how ridiculous these charges are. Do supporters of (Daesh) get the same deal?
“I refuse to pay this fine, as has everyone else I know who has been offered one. Just try and put all 3,000 of us who have defied this ban so far in jail.”
Rogers said the UK is also wrong to arrest people using the phrase “globalize the intifada” while demonstrating in support of Palestine, after police in Manchester said in December that it would detain people chanting it.
“I’m from New York City where thousands of people were murdered by jihadists,” she said. referring to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “I don’t want an intifada in New York City, and I think anyone who does is disgusting, but should it be legal to say in most contexts? Yes.”
