On December 10 last year, the Treasury Department of the United States imposed sanctions on seven current and former officials of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) of Bangladeshi armed police under the pretext that they were involved in human rights violation. In this regard, the high-ranking officials of Bangladesh are requesting for lifting of the unjustifiable sanctions.

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister expressed disappointment at the American sanctions, and requested for its lifting at his telephone talks with the U.S. Secretary of State on December 18 last year, followed by through his letter addressed to the latter on January 1 this year.

In his letter, the Foreign Minister asserted that Bangladesh is taking strong measures to prevent terrorism and transnational drug trafficking and that its armed police as a law enforcement agency are playing a very important role in this fight. He therefore refuted the American allegations of disappearances and extrajudicial killings by the Bangladeshi armed police, as these allegations are groundless.

He pointed out that while more than 1,000 people are shot to death every year by the police in America, these murder cases are termed as “line of duty” but the deaths caused in the battles between the Bangladeshi armed police and the terrorists and drug gangs are publicized as “extrajudicial killing.”

Law Minister and Information and Broadcasting Minister of Bangladesh affirmed that RAB officials are doing their best to protect people’s rights and have not been involved in any sort of human rights violation.  Highlighting the dismal human rights situation in the United States, they stated that it is highly regrettable and prejudiced that the U.S. imposed sanctions on the RAB officials.

Human rights violations committed by the American police are in fact too despicable to talk about.

99% of the American police criminals who take Afro-Americans as mere quarries are freely walking the streets with impunity and exercising their authority as police officers.

The George Floyd case in particular, where this Afro-American was savagely strangled to death by a white policeman in Minnesota in May 2020, shocked the whole world as it was a shuddering atrocity of human slaughter only to be seen in the U.S., a country beset with racism and hate.

The U.S. is left with neither justification nor human decency to poke its nose into others’ human rights issues.

The American attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries are doomed to be opposed and rejected by the international society.

Kang Won, Member of Korea-Asia Association