Police ‘creating climate of fear’

BANGLADESH’S CONTROVERSIAL DRUGS CRACKDOWN IS CRITICISED BY FAMILIES

THE death toll in a Bangladeshi “zero tolerance” crackdown on drugs has risen to 140, with about 18,000 people arrested, the government said last Thursday (7), as a group of activists urged the United Nations to step in to stop the bloodshed.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina approved the anti-narcotics campaign in early May to tackle the spread of methamphetamines, but the killings have raised fears among rights groups of a bloody Philippine-style campaign to wipe out drugs.

Hasina, who faces a general election later in 2018, has dismissed accusations of extra-judicial killings, and said the crackdown enjoys popular support.

The UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein last Wednesday (6) called for independent investigations into the killings and said there was a “high likelihood” that many people may have been arbitrarily detained.

Police in Bangladesh say all the people killed so far were wanted drug kingpins, and all died in late-night gang wars or shootouts with police. No officers have been seriously injured.

However, the wife of one of the men gunned down, Akramul Haque, has alleged that he was murdered in a set-up.

Bangladesh says Haque was a meth kingpin who died after opening fire at police, and was one of 130 accused dealers killed in murky late-night shootouts. But his wife has gone public with tapes that she says prove her husband was murdered in a set-up.

Ayesha Begum says the phone conversations she recorded with Haque on the night he died contradict the official narrative – that he was armed and shot at police, who returned fire in self-defence.

“They killed him in cold blood,” Begum said from Teknaf in south-east Bangladesh, where her husband, a local councillor, was gunned down on May 27.

“They said it was a shootout. But his hands were tied when he was killed. Someone was told to untie his hands after he was shot,” she said, describing what she heard over the phone.

Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said police had copies of the recordings and were investigating, but would not elaborate.

A letter co-signed by 10 high-profile Bangladeshis, including independence heroes and celebrated writ­ers, said the allegations were “unimaginable in any democratic state and society”.

Local rights activist Nur Khan Liton said Haque’s case was not the first one bearing the hallmarks of a set-up.“Some families said the victims were arrested first... and then killed in what appeared to be staged gun battles,” he said.

The main opposition party – whose leader was jailed this year ahead of a general election – says the killings have a political angle, with five of their sup­porters gunned down so far.

“They are murdering innocent people to create a climate of fear, so nobody can hold protests against the government,” said Bangladesh Nationalist Party spokesman Rizvi Ahmed.

The government estimates 400 million yaba tab­lets hit the streets in 2017, despite seizures numbering in the tens of millions of pills. The drugs crisis has expanded beyond urban areas, authorities say, with addicts found in rural areas of the Muslim-majority country.

They allege that Haque was a “top godfather” of the yaba trade in Teknaf, a key transit town for the little red pills crossing the border from labs in Myanmar.

As is the case with almost all the other shootouts, police say they found drugs and weapons on his body– in Haque’s case 10,000 yaba tablets, two guns and rounds of live ammunition.

But Haque’s family says the father of two was innocent. “If he were a yaba dealer, we would have many properties. Yet we struggle to pay our daughters’ school fees,” his wife Begum said.

The prime minister has defiantly stated that “no (drug) godfather will be spared”. “I can say this because whenever I deal with something, I use an iron fist,” Hasina said. (Agencies)