On December 10 last year, the Treasury Department of the United States imposed sanctions on seven current and former officials of the 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 the lifting of the unjustifiable sanctions.

The Bangladeshi Foreign Minister expressed disappointment at the American sanctions and requested its lifting at his telephone conversation with the US Secretary of State on December 18 last year and in his letter addressed to the latter on January 1 this year.

In the 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 about forced disappearances and illegal killings by the Bangladeshi armed police, describing them as 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 “mistakes while performing duty”, but the deaths caused in the battles between the Bangladeshi armed police and terrorists and drug gangs are publicized as “illegal killing.”

The Law and Justice Minister and Information Minister of Bangladesh affirmed that RAB officials are doing their best to protect people’s human 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 a highly regrettable and prejudiced act that the US imposed sanctions on the RAB officials.

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

The American police criminals regard Afro-Americans as mere quarries and 99% of them are freely walking the streets with impunity, 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 US, a country beset with racism and hate.

The US has neither justification nor face for poking its nose into others’ human rights issues.

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