Police kill 1000 people every year in your country (the United States), wrote a miffed Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momin in a letter to the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, calling the US move to sanction Dhaka’s top security officials “funny” for its 400 alleged killings in ten years. 

Early in December, the US government sanctioned Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) —an elite paramilitary force in Bangladesh, formed for fighting organized crimes, drug, and human trafficking— and seven of its former and serving officials, citing extra-judicial killings, and right violations. 

Bangladesh protested the move, and called the move “unexpected.” Significantly, US President Joe Biden hadn’t extended an invite to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for its Summit for Democracy last month. 

“We have various dialogues with the US. So, the sanction was unexpected,” Momin was quoted as saying by the Daily Star. “I said RAB is a very credible organization. They fight drug trafficking, human trafficking, and terrorism—  issues that are also of US concerns." 
 
Late in December, he also wrote a letter to Secretary Blinken on the issue. On Sunday, Momin briefed the media about the content of the letter, and said there was a “scope for discussions on the allegation based on which the sanction was imposed.”

“Police kill 1,000 people in your country every year… And you're saying that 400 people were killed in 10 years here (Bangladesh). This is funny… This is what we wrote in the letter,” Momin said. 

“You term those 'killed in the line of duty’. When it happens in our country, local newspapers refer to those as 'extrajudicial killings’. Both are extra-judicial killings… because you (USA) also don't follow legal procedure. People are killed by law enforcers both here and there,” he said he wrote in the letter to Blinken. 

Formed in 2004 as an elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism force, the RAB soon came under the radar of rights groups for its high-handedness and alleged extra-judicial killings. In recent years, the force has been increasingly used in targeting political opponents, and critics, rights groups alleged. 

Significantly, organized crimes such as abduction, killings, and extortion have come down to a great extent in recent years. 

On Sunday, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, said, “Bangladesh's gains have not been easy, and building on them will require a continued commitment to democracy and human rights against the backdrop of the pandemic and the refugee crisis at the country's doorstep.” 

(SAM)