‘Crossfire doctrine’

A Japanese magazine has said when the audio clip of Ekramul Haque being shot dead on 26 May 2018 went viral online, it put on record the horrific reality of Bangladesh’s extrajudicial killings.

“A wailing wife and children hearing their husband and father being shot dead on the other end of the line, the repeat gunshots by a remorseless paramilitary unit, and the groans of an innocent man begging for his life, telling his killers they’ve got the wrong guy: It’s a set of sounds that once played, just can’t be forgotten,” wrote The Diplomat in a latest article.

It mentioned that the tape has, for the first time, made the Bangladesh government set up a formal commission of inquiry into an unlawful killing by law enforcement.

The article titled “Bangladesh’s Crossfire Doctrine” mentioned that extrajudicial killings spike in Bangladesh’s “Duterte style” drug war.

In about two months, a total of 157 people have been gunned down by the police and paramilitary forces in what they term “crossfire.”

“In general, the standard line of explanation goes like this: The agencies conducted a raid, the agents were fired upon and the men who died did so due to retaliatory fire in self-defense. But the evidence to back this claim up has at best been thin if not outright dubious,” said The Diplomat article written by Siddharthya Roy.

The authorities tried something similar in Ekramul’s case, but have thus far failed to convince many, the magazine said adding that there are multiple witnesses who saw him arrive voluntarily, unarmed.

“This is no war,” the article quoted Nur Khan, a human rights activist, as saying. “Let’s call it what it is - extrajudicial killings carried out in cold blood by the government forces.”

Nur, representing Human Rights Support Society in Dhaka, has been documenting extrajudicial killings and providing legal and logistical support to those wrongfully targeted by the government, according to the article.

“Let’s assume for argument’s sake that these people who’ve been killed were drug dealers,” Nur continued.

“Does that make it right to shoot them dead without due process and access to legal recourse? Is that the law of the land? And this claim of crossfire is patently bogus.”

Extrajudicial killings as state policy

Even though Bangladesh drug war is being likened to what Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has been doing in his country, the crossfire doctrine isn’t necessarily borrowed from him, the article said.

It added that Bangladesh’s present government has been using extrajudicial killings as state policy well before the recent drug war.

The article claimed that ever since the Holey Artisan attack in July 2016, extrajudicial killings have virtually replaced regular investigative and police work.

Soon after taking office in 2009, the article author recalled, the incumbent government enacted the Anti-Terrorism Act with a claim that it would be used to quell Islamist tendencies.

“Despite widespread international criticism, the act kept the definition of terrorist and terrorism vague and wide open. Bolstered by the successes of the War Crimes Tribunal, which sentenced to death past Islamists who had collaborated with the Pakistani army in 1971, the terror act was amended in 2012 and sweeping powers were given to the state and its paramilitary to execute and detain suspects without trial.”

A host of human rights bodies like the Human Rights Watch, as well as foreign embassies, have raised concerns about the Bangladesh government’s trigger-happy ways, the article pointed out.

 It added that the UN Human Rights Committee is concerned at the reported high rate of extrajudicial killings and a lack of investigations and accountability of perpetrators that leaves families of victims without information and redress.

The article insists that domestic law does not effectively criminalise enforced disappearances, and that the state party does not accept that enforced disappearances occur.

Dwelling on the political fallout of the anti-drug drive, the article said that the Bangladesh will hold general elections this yearend and that the drug war has stirred in yet another violent complication in the already turbulent cauldron of Bangladesh politics.

The article referred to “many observers including members of parties that are in alliance with the Awami League as saying that the incumbent government has hit a massive low in popularity. “The drug war is in part a desperate attempt to be seen as assertive, an attempt to win the voters over with decisive action,” read the article.

The article quoted an opposition student leader named A Hassan as saying: “The crossfires in the name of fighting drugs are also a ruse to carry on with the political witch-hunt which this government has perfected.”

“Yaba boomed in this country after the Awami League took power in 2009. And it’s an open secret that their leaders are the kingpins of the trade.”

The article named ruling Awami League member of parliament Abdur Rahman Bodi, as listed in a secret official report as a patron of drug trade, but he is not arrested.