'Enforced disappearances' a term used to malign govt: Bangladesh to UN Working Group

The government of Bangladesh has written to the United Nations arguing that it is "unlawful to arbitrarily consider any missing [person's] case as enforced disappearance".

It sent the correspondence to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on May 12, addressing the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

"The government noticed that there has been a tendency for quite some time to label all cases of missing [persons] as 'enforced disappearances'," the letter read, adding that the legal system of Bangladesh does not have any terminology called "enforced disappearance" but rather criminalises anyone, including law enforcement officials, participating in "kidnappings" or "abduction".

"This is done [using the term 'enforced disappearances'] with the obvious intention of maligning the government and its achievements,"

It went on to say that when victims return, it "proves the allegation of so-called enforced disappearance unreliable".

"Upon investigation of the alleged enforced disappearance cases, the findings reveal that people often disappear voluntarily to avoid legal action for cases lodged against them.

"Sometimes they choose to disappear due to family feud or to avoid business liability, and some often willingly disappear with the intention of embarrassing the government," the letter continued.

To illustrate its point, the government presented four cases where convicts sentenced to death had been absconding for years and were later arrested by the Rapid Action Battalion.

It said that Ashraf Hussain of Savar had been absconding after being convicted of murdering his wife 17 years ago, Sayed Ahmed of Chattagram had been absconding for 20 years following conviction, Abdul Kalil of Jamalpur had been absconding for 22 years, while Mohammad Ishak had been on the run for six.

Rab arrested all of these individuals early this year.

On February 21, 2022, the Working Group had written to the government saying, "Following the announcement of the sanctions imposed by the United States of America on top Rab officials, on December 10, 2021, Bangladeshi authorities have launched a campaign of threats, intimidation, and harassment against relatives of disappeared persons, victims of illegal detention, human rights defenders, and civil society actors."

The Group said it had information from 10 families whose homes were raided by authorities in the middle of the night between December 2021 and February 2022. The families also said they were threatened and forced to either sign blank sheets of paper or pre-written statements indicating that their family member was not forcibly disappeared and they deliberately misled the police.

In December 2021, families of enforced disappearance victims had organised press conferences iterating the above.

The government responded to this in the May 12 letter by stating it was trying to "trace the missing persons" since many of the cases did not have any record with the police stations concerned.

"However, instead of co-operating with the enquiry process by providing information, some of the relatives and a few civil society organisations brought false, exaggerated, and fabricated information against the process," the letter further said.

"All such instances of raising false allegations and spreading misinformation by the sources and feeding those to the international mechanism strongly denote that the campaign is 'deliberate', 'purposeful' and 'motivated'."

It also addressed the fact that most of the cases of enforced disappearance have no legal record, like filed cases.

"The absence of such record or the victim's family's [in]voluntariness [of] filing a case reporting the disappearance gives [raises] strong indication [questions] as to whether the disappearance was by the alleged victim's choice," said the government.

Media reports and human rights activists have routinely documented how families were unable to lodge police complaints when a victim is disappeared -- a fact that was also mentioned in a Working Group's report in September last year.

"Police officers would allegedly refuse to register complaints concerning enforced disappearances or only accept them upon the removal of any allegation of law enforcers' involvement," the Group stated.

The government's letter also commented on Odhikar's role.

"Odhikar is widely known for its disproportionate bias and prejudice against Bangladesh, in particular the ruling Awami league, which is evident in its various reports," it said.

"Besides, one of the top members of Odhikar was earlier appointed by the BNP-Jamaat government as the Deputy Attorney General, which should provide disqualification for the UN human rights mechanism to accept it as an objective and neutral organisation…."

Odhikar's registration as an NGO was scrapped on June 5, due to "publishing of misleading information about various extrajudicial killings, alleged disappearances and murders", according to a notice by the NGO Affairs Bureau.

These, the government says, severely tarnished Bangladesh's global image.

The May 12 letter by the Bangladeshi authorities is a rare instance of the Bangladeshi government communicating with the Working Group regarding enforced disappearances, although the Group has constantly dispatched letters asking for information.

The first time the government responded was after the disappearance of Kalpana Chakma in 1996.

The second and third times were earlier this year on January 10 and February 5, when the government finally gave information about 76 victims of enforced disappearances -- information the Working Group had been asking for for two and half decades.

In response, The Group had said the information provided for 66 of those cases was "insufficient".