BANGLADESH

Home minister Shahara Khatun on Tuesday dismissed a report of Human Rights Watch that said forced disappearances in Bangladesh increased sharply last year.

"The report is not correct," she told journalists following the 51st meet of the National Smuggling Prevention Committee at the Secretariat.

The New York-based human rights organisation in its World Report 2012 said the number of extrajudicial killings by Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has dropped following criticisms at home and abroad.

However, 'enforced disappearances' increased sharply last year in Bangladesh as security agencies replaced one form of abuse with another, it said.

"The accusations against the law-enforcing agencies are not right. They are carrying out their duty properly and are working to protect, not to force disappearances," Shahara said in her first reaction to the report.

The organisation had also claimed that the government took no significant steps to investigate and prosecute torture in custody and extrajudicial killings in 2011 and showed an increasing intolerance for criticism.

But Shahara said the government was investigating such disappearances and will search out those responsible.

Debates were sparked about the role of law enforces after a number of incidents of people were taken away by people identifying them as law enforcers, especially Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) personnel. In most cases, bodies of the victims of such 'forced disappearances' were later 'recovered' by law enforcers from rivers, forests or isolated locations.

After National Human Rights Commission chief Mizanur Rahman urged the government to clear the confusion over such forced disappearances, Shahara had told journalists last month that she learnt about such incidents from newspapers.

Human Rights Watch said it thinks human rights organisations, journalists, trade unions, and civil society activists remain at risk in the country, with some suffering attacks.

The World Report assessed progress on human rights during the past year in more than 90 countries, including popular uprisings in the Arab world that few would have imagined.

BORDER INCIDENTS

The home minister criticised the recent torture of a Bangladeshi by the Border Security Force and added that India suspended eight BSF members after the incident.

BSF's atrocities along the border recently came under the spotlight again after a video showing 22-year-old Habibur Rahman, being stripped, kicked and beaten by them, was aired by NDTV and some other Indian TV channels.

Habibur told that he was tortured by the BSF while returning to Bangladesh with cattle through Khanpur border of Paba upazila in Rajshahi district on Dec 9 last year.

The Indian border forces said that an investigation was ongoing.

State minister for home Shamsul Hoque Tuku told journalists, "The prevention of such untoward incidents requires awareness of the people living in the frontiers. The neighbouring country will also have to be aware."

"This problem shall be solved through discussion," he said, referring to the upcoming meeting between India and Bangladesh in March.

CENTRAL ANTI-SMUGGLING MONITORING CELL

The home minister, briefing journalists on the meeting, said that the ministry will form a central monitoring cell to combat smuggling. "Anyone can give information to the cell and help in preventing smuggling."

Admitting that many drug- and weapon-smugglers are going free after being detained, Shahara said, "Officials have been instructed to be more careful to ensure punishments are served."

She added that the government was conducting regular drives and that mobile courts were being deployed to prevent smuggling.