Rights groups urge UN to ban Bangladesh police unit from deployment

Dhaka, Jan 20, (dpa/GNA) – International rights groups are urging the United Nations to ban a Bangladeshi police unit blamed for widespread abuses from deploying as part of UN peacekeeping forces.

Twelve rights organizations made the appeal in a letter, made public on Thursday, to the UN Department of Peace Operations.

They want to block the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) police unit, which is accused of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances in the South Asian nation, from the UN’s blue helmet deployments.

Bangladesh is one of the major contributors to UN peacekeeping operations with some 6,359 personnel from the armed forces and 477 from the police units currently stationed among different missions.

“If Secretary General Guterres is serious about ending human rights abuses by UN peacekeepers, he will ensure that units with proven records of abuse like the Rapid Action Battalion are excluded from deployment,” Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights group, said.

“The evidence is clear; now it’s time for the UN to draw a line,” added Kennedy in a statement posted on Human Rights Watch’s website.

The United States last month designated the RAB as a “foreign entity that is responsible for or complicit in or has directly or indirectly engaged in, serious abuse.”

It also imposed sanctions on seven former and current senior officials in the unit.

The groups say the Bangladeshi government, instead of taking steps towards reforms, has responded to the US sanctions by retaliating against the rights defenders and the victims’ families.

According to the US Department of the Treasury, NGOs have alleged that the RAB along with other law enforcement agencies are responsible for more than 600 disappearances since 2009 and 600 extra-judicial killings since 2018.

The unit was founded in 2004 drawing members of the police, army, navy, air force and border guards.

GNA