GENEVA: The UN human rights office said Friday that it will deploy a fact-finding team to Bangladesh to investigate alleged rights abuses and violations through use of excessive force by security forces to quell protests led by students against the former government this summer.
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he had received an invitation from the country’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus, to send the team to Bangladesh. The visit is set to take place in coming weeks.
Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, took over this month as head of the government after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down and fled the country to India amid a mass uprising.
The United Nations has reported nearly 650 people died since July 15 when the student protests turned violent, and the figures also covered the deaths of many in new violence after Hasina left the country on Aug. 5.
A UN advance team visited Bangladesh over the last week and met with student leaders of the protests, including some who had been detained, as well as interim government and police officials, journalists, rights defenders and others.
The team received commitments from authorities and security for their “full cooperation” with the team’s work, the rights office said.
“The UN human rights office looks forward to supporting the interim government and people of Bangladesh at this pivotal moment to revitalize democracy, seek accountability and reconciliation, and advance human rights for all the people in Bangladesh,” the rights office said in a statement.
UN to deploy team to Bangladesh to probe rights abuses, violations during mass uprising
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UN to deploy team to Bangladesh to probe rights abuses, violations during mass uprising
- UN fact-finding team’s visit is set to take place in coming weeks
- UN has reported nearly 650 people died since July 15 when the student protests turned violent
Russian minister visits Cuba as Trump ramps up pressure on Havana
- The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba
HAVANA: Russia’s interior minister began a visit to ally Cuba on Tuesday, a show of solidarity after US President Donald Trump warned that the island’s longtime communist government “is ready to fall.”
Trump this month warned Havana to “make a deal,” the nature of which he did not divulge, or pay a price similar to Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by US forces in a January 3 bombing raid that killed dozens of people.
Venezuela was a key ally of Cuba and a critical supplier of oil and money, which Trump has vowed to cut off.
“We in Russia regard this as an act of unprovoked armed aggression against Venezuela,” Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Russian state TV Rossiya-1 of the US actions after landing in Cuba.
“This act cannot be justified in any way and once again proves the need to increase vigilance and consolidate all efforts to counter external factors,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba.
Russia and Cuba, both under Western sanctions, have intensified their relations since 2022, with an isolated Moscow seeking new friends and trading partners since its invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba needs all the help it can get as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and now added pressure from Washington.
Trump has warned that acting President Delcy Rodriguez will pay “a very big price” if she does not toe Washington’s line — specifically on access to Venezuela’s oil and loosening ties with US foes Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
On Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Havana, Victor Koronelli, wrote on X that Kolokoltsev was in Cuba “to strengthen bilateral cooperation and the fight against crime.”
The US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, meanwhile, met the head of the US Southern Command in Miami on Tuesday “to discuss the situation in Cuba and the Caribbean,” the embassy said on X.
The command is responsible for American forces operating in Central and South America that have carried out seizures of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil and strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
- Soldiers killed -
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the revolution that swept communist Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
Havana and Moscow were close communist allies during the Cold War, but that cooperation was abruptly halted in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
During his first presidential term, Trump walked back a detente with Cuba launched by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them assigned to Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the US strikes that saw the Venezuelan strongman whisked away in cuffs to stand trial in New York.
Kolokoltsev attended a memorial for the fallen men on Tuesday.
