In 2005, Bangladesh veteran an unprecedented period of continuous political
instability. On 17 August 2005, four hundred bombs exploded in sixty-four
districts of the nation. As a upshot of this instability and its national security repercussions, Bangladesh's
questionable human rights has deteriorated.
Bangladeshi security forces have been persistently criticised by Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch due to grave abuses of human rights. These
include extrajudicial summary executions, excessive use of force and the use of
custodial anguish. Reporters and defenders of human rights are beleaguered and
intimidated by the authorities. Since 2003, legislative barriers to examination
and transparency have afforded security services imperviousness from
accountability to the general public. Hindu and Ahmadi Muslim minorities human
rights are in a compromised state, and corruption is still a most important
problem, such that Transparency International has planned Bangladesh as the
most shady country in the world for five consecutive years.
Torture
RAB and other security agencies have
been accused of using afflict during custody and grilling. One allegation of
such came from a young man who was in detention in Dhaka for protest against
the assault of an old man by plainclothes RAB agents. He was later severely
tortured.[5]
On 27 July 2005, two brothers from Rajshahi,
Azizur Rahman Shohel and Atiquer Rahman Jewel, were in prison on fictitious
charges, beaten with batons and subjected to electric shocks. It is so-called
that this brutality stem from the brothers' family being unskillful of paying a
sufficient bribe. The brothers were distressed to such an point that they were
hospitalised at the Rajshahi Medical School Hospital under police custody. The
most thorough account of torture in Bangladesh was the May 2007 case of torture
beside Tasneem Khalil, a journalist and blogger. He was tortured while in the
custody of Directorate General of Forces Intelligence during the interim
government, and after his liberate, Khalil wrote a report published by Human Rights Watch. Sweden granted Khalil exile
after he fled Bangladesh.
Persecution of minority communities
Although Bangladesh is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, a covenant considered to ensure self-determination of
religion and of appearance, it has tolerate aggressive assaults on religious marginal
communities by extremists.
In January 2004, the government succumbed to an ultimatum from their
coalition partner, the Islami Oikya Jote, and the extremist vigilante
Khatme Nabuwat Movement to declare that Ahmadi Muslims
are "not" Muslims.Not wishing to lose its majority, Ahmadiyya
publications were declared illegal by the government. A constitutional court
suspended the ban, but Islamist groups are threatening legal challenge to this.
Attacks on the homes and places of worship of Ahmadiyya are still rampant,
but the government has chosen neither to prosecute those responsible, nor
discipline police officers who failed to protect victims. Other holy minorities
have come under attack, with abductions, desecration of religious sites, and required
conversions persistently reported. There have been many reports of Hindus
having been evicted from their properties, and of Hindu girls being raped,but
the police have refused to inspect, to this point. Due to this climate of devout
persecution, several hundred thousand Buddhists, Hindus and Christians have
left the country.
Women's rights
The United Nations country team in Bangladesh has identified "marital
instability" as a key cause of lack and "ultra and extreme"
poverty among female-headed households. The Bangladesh expect Commission has
said that women are more susceptible to becoming poor after losing a male
earning family member due to rejection or divorce. Women in Bangladesh are above
all prone to a form of domestic hostility known as acid throwing, in which thorough
acid is thrown onto an personage (usually at the face) with the aims of severe
disfiguration and social isolation. In Bangladesh, women are discriminately
targeted: according to one study, from 1999–2009, 68% of acid attack survivors
were women/girls.
In 2010, a law touching domestic sadism
was introduced, which defines causing “economic loss” as an act of house
violence and recognises the exact to live in the marital home. The law also
empowers courts to supply temporary upholding to survivors of familial bloodshed.
In 2012, the Law Commission of Bangladesh, supported by the Ministry of Law,
Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, done nationwide delve into into reforms for
Muslim, Hindu, and Christian personal laws. In May 2012, the cabinet official a
bill for elective registration of Hindu marriages. The Ministry of Law, Justice
and Parliamentary Affairs is also in view of reforms to civil court procedures—chiefly
on issuance of summons that will improve family court.
Freedom
of religion
Although firstly Bangladesh opted
for a secular nationalist ideology as embodied in its Constitution, the
principle of secularism was subsequently replaced by a commitment to the
Islamic way of life through a series of constitutional amendments and
government proclamations between 1977 and 1988. The Constitution establishes Islam
as the state religion but provides for the right to practice—subject to law,
public order, and morality—the religion of one's choice.[17]The
Government generally respects this provision in practice.
Intimidation
of human rights defenders, journalists, and the opposition
Voices of opposition are ever more
at risk in Bangladesh, as groups who essay or speak out beside the actions of
the government have create themselves ever more exposed and under molest. On 27
January 2005, Shah Abu Mohamed Shamsul Kibria, former Finance Minister and
senior member of the secular Bangladesh Awami League, was assassi This
followed a 2004 attempt to assassinate the leader of the Awami League,
Sheikh Hasina,
in a bomb and grenade blast. She survived, but twenty-three members of her
party were killed. Other Awami League members, junior and senior alike, have
reported harassment
and coercion.
Human rights organisations also
operate under the threat of assault from the authorities and government
supporters.On 8 August 2005, a group of BNP[expand acronym] members attacked
two human rights activists, who had been investigating torture against an
Ahmadi
Journalists face the same fate: for three years, the organisation Reporters sans Frontières, has named
Bangladesh the country with the largest number of journalists physically
attacked or threatened with death. The government has no intention of
protecting journalists, whereas Islamist groups continue to intensify their
intimidation of the independent news media.
Bangladeshi journalist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, the editor
of the Bangladeshi tabloid The Weekly
Blitz, was imprisoned after writing articles warning about the rise of Islamic
radicals, and urging Bangladesh to recognise Israel.
Choudhury is facing charges of sedition, treason, blasphemy and espionage since January 2004 for having tried to
attend a conference of the Hebrew Writers' Association
in Tel Aviv.
He violated the Passport Act by attempting to travel to Israel in November
2003. The Act forbids citizens from visiting countries with which Bangladesh
does not maintain diplomatic relations. He was beaten and interrogated for 10
days in an attempt to extract a confession that he was spying for Israel. He
spent the next 17 months in solitary confinement, and was denied
medical treatment for his glaucoma. On intervention of US Congressman
Mark Kirk,
who spoke to Bangladesh's ambassador to the US, Choudhury was released on bail,
though the charges were not dropped.
In 2007, House Resolution 64 passed the United States
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
calling on the government of Bangladesh to drop all charges against Choudhury.
AIDS
in Bangladesh
With less than 0.1 percent of the
population estimated to be HIV-positive, Bangladesh is a low HIV-prevalence
country.Whilst this rise of AIDS is not confined to Bangladesh in particular,
the government is doing very little to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Politically vulnerable groups at
risk of HIV infection, such as sex workers and men who have sex with men, have
not been educated about the risk of AIDS, nor protected by the authorities, and
they have found themselves regularly assaulted, abducted, raped, gang raped,
and subjected to extortion by the police and by powerful criminal Organizations
have been established to stem the development of AIDS through education, but
such projects have not been successful due to cases of police brutality
directed at members working on such proj
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