In India, rape is devastating women. In Bangladesh, it is the government.

This is through its violations of women through arbitrary arrests, beatings, and detentions. Their crime: they are the relatives of Bangladesh’s Islamic opposition party.

How can the Prime Minister of Bangladesh tolerate its police abusing women, some pregnant and some elderly, simply because of their beliefs and those of their loved ones? 

The government’s security forces are completely out of control. This injustice has not gone unnoticed though. Human rights groups have been bringing it to the world’s attention for a while, yet the ignorance about these crimes remain.

First, Bangladeshi police officers arrested and jailed men from the opposition party without due process. Now, their women are being punished through social and sexual humiliation as part of an ongoing, Islamophobic war.

This is all connected to the country’s kangaroo war crime tribunal. Its chief judge was recently forced to resign amid the Economist magazine’s expose of allegations that someone from Brussels was really directing the so-called judicial process.
See the full Economist magazine report here: http://tiny.cc/BD01 & Human Rights Watch: http://tinyurl.com/bangla02

Action Items 

Call and write to the State Dept: 202-647-6575

• Email Secretary of State: http://tiny.cc/byffdw

• Also call Bangladesh Desk at the State Department: 202-647-9516 & 202-647-1450

Ask to Release all Women Detained:

• Call Bangladesh Ambassador today demanding to investigate police in the murder of the labor leader and disappearance of BNP leaders. 

Ambassador H. E. Akramul Qader; Phone: 202-244-0183 or send a web message through http://www.bdembassyusa.org/index.php?page=contact 

Background:

It is true that during the war of Independence in 1971, there were many Bangladeshis who were in favour of united Pakistan but always opposed indiscrimate killings of East Pakistani nationals by the rulers of then Pakistan. Some of those leaders, including Maulana Mojahed and Maulana Nizami, who have since served as successful ministers for Bangladesh government and are now the opposition leaders, are being tried for rape and murder by the current government. This is the same government which dismissed the icon of Bangladesh, the Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus.

Bangladesh is seeing a strong pattern of human rights violations, torture, murder and disappearances of a growing number of opposition leaders, labor activists, student leaders and journalists by the government as documented by the Human Rights Watch. See the Human Rights Watch Action Alert for retrial: http://tinyurl.com/bangla02

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