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“A decade after the killing of the 2 journalists, there’s nonetheless no justice on account of an appalling and pervasive tradition of impunity in Bangladesh,” the 5 UN Particular Rapporteurs stated in an announcement.
Mr. Sarowar and Ms. Runi, who had been married, had been stabbed to demise of their dwelling within the capital, Dhaka, in entrance of their five-year-old son on 12 February 2012.
The consultants stated it’s extensively believed they had been focused due to their investigative reporting on corruption in Bangladesh’s vitality sector which they had been about to publish.
Crimes go unpunished
Bangladesh’s Excessive Court docket tasked the Speedy Motion Battalion (RAB), the nation’s elite police unit, to research the case.
Final November, the Court docket demanded for the 84th time that RAB ought to submit its findings, which nonetheless has not occurred.
“When crimes towards journalists go unpunished, they embolden the perpetrators and encourage extra assaults, threats and killings with the intention of intimidating the media into silence. We see these deeply worrying indicators in Bangladesh,” the assertion stated.
Convey perpetrators to justice
Not less than 15 journalists have been killed in Bangladesh over the previous decade, in response to the UN consultants.
“We urge the federal government to conduct and full immediate, thorough, impartial and efficient investigations and produce perpetrators to justice for the homicide of Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi and different killings of journalists and human rights defenders in Bangladesh,” their assertion stated.
The UN consultants have obtained quite a few studies of journalists, activists, and members of civil society teams being arbitrarily detained, attacked, kidnapped, threatened, and subjected to judicial harassment.
These incidents seem like hardly ever investigated or prosecuted, and in some circumstances native authorities are considered straight implicated within the assaults.
Journalism below assault
“Journalism shouldn’t carry the inherent danger of being attacked, intimidated or killed with impunity however sadly that’s the present actuality for a lot of journalists, human rights defenders and different members of civil society in Bangladesh,” they stated.
The consultants have introduced allegations to the eye of the Authorities which regularly have gone unanswered. Though they wrote to the authorities in 2012 following the homicide of Mr. Sarowar and Ms. Runi, they by no means obtained a response.
They additional expressed concern over repeated delays surrounding the trial into the deadly capturing of journalist and human rights defender Abdul Hakim Shimul in February 2017, allegedly by the then mayor of Shahzadpur. The case has been positioned on a keep order by the Excessive Court docket, with all of the accused on bail.
In addition they recalled the demise in custody final February of dissident author Mushtaq Ahmed, who spent 9 months in pre-trial detention on expenses below the Digital Safety Act (DSA) for publishing an article that criticised the federal government’s pandemic response.
They stated the authorities did not conduct an impartial and neutral investigation into his demise, regardless of his household’s issues that Mr. Ahmed had been tortured whereas in police custody, and that there was a three-hour delay in admitting him to hospital as soon as he fell sick.
An inner committee established by the Residence Ministry concluded Mr. Ahmed’s demise was pure, with out investigating his household’s claims.
UN consultants raised their issues with the federal government after they raised their issues about his demise in custody.
Position of Rapporteurs
The 5 Particular Rapporteurs who signed the assertion monitor violations of the suitable to freedom of opinion and expression, and points similar to torture and different merciless, inhuman or degrading therapy or punishment.
They’re appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and function of their particular person capability.
They don’t seem to be UN employees or do they obtain a wage from the Group.
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