Dhaka is expected to lodge a strong protest against the killing and torture of Bangladeshis by India’s Border Security Force in the two-day home ministers’ talks scheduled for February 24–25 in New Delhi.
The home minister, Sahara Khatun, is scheduled to leave Dhaka for Delhi on February 23 leading a 12-member delegation to the bilateral talks with her counterpart P Chidambaram on issues relating to, among others, border management, security cooperation and implementation of the land boundary protocol, a senior official said.
The high-level meeting is taking place at a time when human rights organisations and the media across the world, even in India, are levelling allegations that incidents of killing and torture of Bangladeshis by the Indian border guards are increasing in the frontiers.
‘We will strongly protest at the killing and torture of Bangladeshi civilians along the border and ask India to clear its position on such recent incidents,’ the official, also a delegation member, told New Age.
He said that the talks would also focus on the ratification of the land protocol to resolve border disputes and the exchange of enclaves which have been left pending for decades.
According to rights organisation Odhikar, the Indian border guards have killed 935 Bangladeshis and injured 681 since January 2000.
The Indian guards have reportedly killed 205 and injured 220 Bangladeshis since January 6, 2009 when the ruling Awami League-led alliance assumed office.
‘The two-day meeting in Delhi will discuss, among others, the execution of three deals — Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, Transfer of Sentenced Persons, Agreement on Combating Organised Crime and Illegal Drug Trafficking,’ the home ministry’s additional secretary Kamal Uddin Ahmed told New Age.
Both the sides earlier agreed to put into force the deals signed during the visit of the Bangladesh prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to India in January 2010 and to implement the Coordinated Border Management Plan signed during the visit of the Indian home minister, P Chidambaram, to Bangladesh in July 2011.
During the last such meeting in Dhaka in July 29–30, Chidambaram assured Sahara that Indian Border Security Force would not shoot dead any unarmed civilians under any circumstances in the frontiers.
‘We have issued strict instructions to our Border Security Force that under no circumstances, they should fire on anyone trying to cross either from Bangladesh to India or from India to Bangladesh. The message has gone down to the jawans,’ Chidambaram said at a joint press conference after the official talks at the Bangladesh Secretariat.
A memorandum on the ‘Coordinated Border Management Plan’ was signed during the meeting to check crimes such as killing, trafficking in persons and drug smuggling in the borders of the two neighbouring countries.
According to the agreed border management plan, both the countries would strengthen patrol in ‘designated areas’ along the borders to check cross-border crimes and illegal movement of persons. Bangladesh and India share a 4,098-kilometre porous border.
Despite such assurances from the Indian side time and again, the killing of innocent Bangladeshis by BSF keep taking place in the border.
In contrary to his government’s apparent stand against the border killing, BSF director general, UK Bansal, said that it was not possible for the Indian guards to stop firing in the Bangladesh-India border, which was protested at by the government as well as a cross-section of people in Bangladesh.
‘Firing in the border can never be stopped totally… So long criminal activities would continue to take place along the India-Bangladesh border, the BSF will have to prevent those offences and it is the duty of the force,’ said the BSF chief in the interview with the BBC Bengali Service on February 7, 2012.
As for implementation of the Indira-Mujib land boundary agreement of 1974, the officials said that all the border-related issues, including the exchange of the enclaves and the settlement of 6.5 kilometres of undemarcated border areas and the land in adverse possessions, would also be discussed at the talks.
The bilateral talks might focus on the signing of an extradition treaty between the two countries, which would help Bangladesh to get back some fugitives, including two killers of Bangladesh’s first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman hiding in India.
India, on the other hand, wants the custody of the general secretary of the United Liberation Front of Asom Anup Chetia and other members of the organisation languishing in Bangladeshi jails, the officials said.
The television screening of the recent brutal torture of a Bangladeshi young man, Habibur Rahman, of Chapainawabganj, by the BSF sparked an uproar by civil society and international human rights watchdogs.
Even leading Indian daily newspaper the Hindu on January 24 asked the Indian government to apologise to Bangladesh for such inhuman torture.
The New York-based international rights watchdog, Human Rights Watch, on January 31 asked the Indian government to prosecute the personnel of its Border Security Force responsible for the torture on Bangladeshis along the border.
In a report headlined ‘Bangladesh-India border: Wall of Death’ posted online on January 4, the GlobalPost said the barbed-wire fence installed by India along the border ‘is the world’s longest — and bloodiest — barbed wire fence.’
‘Dubbed the “wall of death” by locals, the 4,000km barrier spans the length of the fifth-longest border in the world, and is manned by the BSF, whose guards kill both Bangladeshis and Indians with impunity,’ the report said.
Although the Indian border guards claim that they open fire only to contain border crimes such as smuggling, the killing of young girl Felani sparked a huge criticism across the world.
Fifteen-year-old Felani Khatun was shot dead by the BSF from close range on January 7, 2011 when she climbed up and reached the top of the 2.5 metre high fence.
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