Bangladesh urges US to waive ban on RAB, officials
The Bangladesh government has requested the US authorities to withdraw the sanctions on the Rapid Action Battalion and its former and current officials.
Foreign minister AK Abdul Momen told journalists on Sunday that he made the request in a letter to his US counterpart Antony J Blinken ‘to work on a priority basis to find ways and means to waive sanctions’.
The minister hoped in the letter, sent to Washington on December 24, that the issues involving the sanctions would be resolved quickly with due seriousness.
The correspondence referred to the discussion he had with Blinken over phone.
Momen also hoped that the two countries would continue sincere and candid dialogues to help advance the bilateral relations on the basis of mutual respect and benefits keeping in consideration the Bangladesh government’s commitment to democracy, freedom of speech and human rights, rights of the minorities and labour rights.
The foreign minister, in the letter, defended the RAB as the most efficient law enforcement agency of the government for combating terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking and other transnational crimes.
Iterating the government’s commitment to pursuing its zero tolerance policy to combat militancy, terrorism, violence against women and drug trafficking, Momen said that the RAB’s competence and experience would remain relevant in dealing with these issues that are considered threats to national and regional security.
The sanctions on the RAB were ‘unexpected’ and a matter of ‘sheer surprise’ when the two nations were set to celebrate the five decades of ever-growing partnership, he observed.
The minister also drew the attention of Blinken to the ‘country report on terrorism 2020,’ in which the US Department of State appreciated Bangladesh with the mention of only three minor terrorist occurrences with no mention of terrorism-related death.
There was no merit in bringing the entire force under the sanctions of the US Department of Treasury as the Bangladesh government always showed its readiness to deal with specific allegations against the members of the force, Momen said.
Emphasising a careful re-examination of the decisions involving the sanctions on the RAB, Momen stated that such decisions might have been influenced by unverified or unsubstantiated allegations about the command responsibility rather than by facts and ground realities.
Momen alleged that some foreign-funded NGOs remained active in deliberately misguiding the friends and partners of Bangladesh by propagating concocted, presumptive and distorted narratives against the government and its machineries to pursue their vested interests.
With mentions about sections of training provided to the RAB by the US and the UK, the minister said that the government was also open to reviewing some aspects of the rules of engagements of the force and its training on human rights in handling crimes.
The charges for the sanctions on the RAB and the officials the US authorities mentioned against them on December 10 included gross violation of human rights, including extrajudicial killings, mostly targeting opposition party members, journalists and human rights activists.
The officials slapped with the sanctions are former RAB director general Benazir Ahmed, now the inspector general of police, current RAB DG Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, current RAB additional DG Khan Mohammad Azad and former additional DGs Tofayel Mustafa Sorwar, Mohammad Jahangir Alam and Mohammad Anwar Latif Khan.
The implications of the sanctions imposed on the officials also include the possibility of freezing their property under the US executive order 13818 of 2017.
News Courtesy:
https://www.newagebd.net/article/158896/bangladesh-urges-us-to-waive-ban-on-rab-officials
