US report on human rights ‘disgraceful’ for Bangladesh: BNP

BNP has termed “disgraceful” for the country the recent US report that focused on human rights practices in Bangladesh.

The party also claimed that the “real” human rights scenario in the country was more dreadful than reflected in the report.

“We can’t appreciate the US report as it said there were no democracy, press freedom and freedom of expression in Bangladesh. This is very much disgraceful for us as an independent nation,” BNP Spokesman Asaduzzaman Ripon told a press briefing at the party’s Nayapaltan central office today.

On June 25, US Secretary of State John Kerry presented the 2014 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices at the US Department of State in Washington DC.

Bangladesh is a secular, pluralistic parliamentary democracy with a vibrant civil society, the report said in its Bangladesh chapter.

The constitution provides for freedom of speech and press, but the government sometimes failed to respect these rights. There were some limitations on freedom of speech, it claimed.

Ripon, also the BNP’s international affairs secretary, said as an opposition, BNP was not cheerful following such a report as the party “believed in positive politics.”

In the report, the US said the most significant human rights problems in Bangladesh were extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances, some restrictions on online speech and the press, and poor working conditions and labour rights.

Reacting to the report, Ripon said, “The gravity of human rights violation by the government is more horrifying than it was stated in the US report.”

He claimed the report mentioned that the international community did not accept the January-5 elections as it was questionable. “The US also doesn’t think that the current government represents the people of the country,” Ripon said.

On a different note, pointing to Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu’s Friday’s remark that BNP chief Khaleda Zia would be kept in Kashimpur jail, Ripon said: “We don’t know when a leader like him started sitting on the chair of a judge.”