Dhaka: Bangladesh’s new authorities on Wednesday opened an investigation into hundreds of enforced disappearances by security forces during the rule of ousted premier Sheikh Hasina, the government said.
It includes the notorious Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) paramilitary force, accused of numerous rights abuses, and which was sanctioned by the United States for its role in extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.
Human Rights Watch last year said security forces had committed “over 600 enforced disappearances” since Hasina came to power in 2009, and nearly 100 remain unaccounted for.
Many of those detained were from Hasina’s rivals, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist party.
Hasina’s government consistently denied the allegations, claiming some of those reported missing had drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe.
Hasina fled to India by helicopter on August 5 after weeks of student-led protests forced her to quit, ending her iron-fisted 15-year rule.
The five-member committee, headed by retired high court judge Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury, will also investigate other paramilitary police units, including the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), a government order late Tuesday said.
The UN rights office says both the RAB and BGB forces have “records of serious human rights violations, including enforced disappearances and torture and ill-treatment.”
The commission, ordered to begin work by the interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, has 45 working days to submit its report.
Sanjida Islam Tulee, a coordinator of a group campaigning for the release of people detained under Hasina, welcomed the commission.
“Most importantly, the report needs to be published fully and no information is kept hidden,” Tulee told AFP, who heads the group called Mayer Daak, meaning “The Call of the Mothers.”
Tulee, who along with those who searching for missing relatives met earlier this month with Yunus asking for action, said she wanted the commission to listen to every family without discrimination.
She said they wanted the return of those missing, and for those responsible to face justice.
More than 600 people were killed in the weeks leading up to Hasina’s ouster, according to the United Nations rights team’s preliminary report, suggesting the toll was “likely an underestimate.”
The day after she fled, families gathered outside a military intelligence force building in Dhaka waiting desperately for their relatives.
But only a handful have been confirmed as released.
Bangladesh probes enforced disappearance by security forces under ousted Hasina
https://arab.news/cunzd
Bangladesh probes enforced disappearance by security forces under ousted Hasina
- Human Rights Watch says security forces committed “over 600 enforced disappearances” since Hasina came to power in 2009
- Many of those detained were from Hasina’s rivals, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist party
Trump warns Maduro against playing ‘tough’ as US escalates pressure campaign on Venezuela
- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday fired back at Donald Trump, who has ordered US naval forces to blockade the South American country's oil wealth, saying the US president would be "better off" focusing on domestic issues rather than threatenin
- The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President Donald Trump on Monday delivered a new warning to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the US Coast Guard steps up efforts to interdict oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea as part of the Republican administration’s escalating pressure campaign on the government in Caracas.
Trump was surrounded by his top national security aides, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as he suggested that he remains ready to further escalate his four-month pressure campaign on the Maduro government, which began with the stated purpose of stemming the flow of illegal drugs from the South American nation but has developed into something more amorphous.
“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’ll ever be able to play tough,” Trump said of Maduro as he took a break from his Florida holiday vacation to announce plans for the Navy to build a new, large warship.
Trump levied his latest threat as the US Coast Guard on Monday continued for a second day to chase a sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration describes as part of a “dark fleet” Venezuela is using to evade US sanctions. The tanker, according to the White House, is flying under a false flag and is under a US judicial seizure order.
“It’s moving along and we’ll end up getting it,” Trump said.
It is the third tanker pursued by the Coast Guard, which on Saturday seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries that US officials said was part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet.
The Coast Guard, with assistance from the Navy, seized a sanctioned tanker called Skipper on Dec. 10, also part of the shadow fleet of tankers that the US says operates on the fringes of the law to move sanctioned cargo. That ship was registered in Panama.
Trump, after that first seizure, said the US would carry out a “blockade” of Venezuela. Trump has repeatedly said that Maduro’s days in power are numbered.
Last week, Trump demanded that Venezuela return assets that it seized from US oil companies years ago, justifying anew his announcement of a blockade against sanctioned oil tankers traveling to or from the South American country.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees the Coast Guard, said in a Monday appearance on “Fox & Friends” that the targeting of tankers is intended to send “a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro is participating in cannot stand, he needs to be gone, and that we will stand up for our people.”
Russian diplomats evacuate families from Caracas
Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry started evacuating the families of diplomats from Venezuela, according to a European intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
The official told The Associated Press the evacuations include women and children and began on Friday, adding that Russian Foreign Ministry officials are assessing the situation in Venezuela in “very grim tones.” The ministry said in an X posting that it was not evacuating the embassy but did not address queries about whether it was evacuating the families of diplomats.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil on Monday said he spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who he said expressed Russia’s support for Venezuela against Trump’s declared blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.
“We reviewed the aggressions and flagrant violations of international law that have been committed in the Caribbean: attacks against vessels and extrajudicial executions, and the unlawful acts of piracy carried out by the United States government,” Gil said in a statement.
The scene on a Venezuelan beach near a refinery
While US forces targeted the vessels in international waters over the weekend, a tanker that’s considered part of the shadow fleet was spotted moving between Venezuelan refineries, including one about three hours west of the capital, Caracas.
The tanker remained at the refinery in El Palito through Sunday, when families went to the town’s beach to relax with children now on break from school.
Music played on loudspeakers as people swam and surfed with the tanker in the background. Families and groups of teenagers enjoyed themselves, but Manuel Salazar, who has parked cars at the beach for more than three decades, noticed differences from years past, when the country’s oil-dependent economy was in better shape and the energy industry produced at least double the current 1 million barrels per day.
“Up to nine or 10 tankers would wait out there in the bay. One would leave, another would come in,” Salazar, 68, said. “Now, look, one.”
The tanker in El Palito has been identified by Transparencia Venezuela, an independent watchdog promoting government accountability, to be part of the shadow fleet.
Area residents on Sunday recalled when tankers would sound their horns at midnight New Year’s Eve, while some would even send up fireworks to celebrate the holiday.
“Before, during vacations, they’d have barbecues; now all you see is bread with bologna,” Salazar said of Venezuelan families spending the holiday at the beach next to the refinery. “Things are expensive. Food prices keep going up and up every day.”
Venezuela’s ruling party-controlled National Assembly on Monday gave initial approval to a measure that would criminalize a broad range of activities that could be linked to the seizure of oil tankers.
Lawmaker Giuseppe Alessandrello, who introduced the bill, said people could be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years for promoting, requesting, supporting, financing or participating in “acts of piracy, blockades or other international illegal acts against” commercial entities operating with the South American country.
The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond.
At least 104 people have been killed in 28 known strikes since early September. The strikes have faced scrutiny from US lawmakers and human rights activists, who say the administration has offered scant evidence that its targets are indeed drug smugglers and that the fatal strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.
