Heed UNHRC's call

Notwithstanding the laudatory comments by the UN Human Rights Council on the improvement of labour rights and several other sectors, its call upon the Bangladesh to thoroughly investigate all incidents of abductions, enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings, merits immediate attention of the government.

A leading human rights organisation in the country has reported that in the first three months of this year alone, 46 people have died allegedly in "encounters" or "crossfires" with the law enforcement agencies and during this same period, three people went missing. It has also been reported in the media that from 2004 till 2017, 1,900 people have been killed in such incidents where police, Rab and joint forces were allegedly involved.

As a newspaper, we have been urging the government for long to investigate these cases and also put an end to such practices by different agencies. Different national and international human rights organisations have also stressed the need to investigate such cases. One wonders why we should wait or allow international organisations to prod us to initiate actions which the government ought to do on its own volition. The need for good governance and rule of law mandates that on it.

Now that the UN Human Rights Council in its universal periodic review has urged for proper probe into these cases, the government should investigate each and every such case, probe the allegations of involvement of law enforcement agencies, and bring the perpetrators to justice. The spate of enforced disappearances and extra judicial killings should not be allowed to go on. The government has an obligation to protect its citizens from such situations.