Demand to bar Bangladeshi soldiers from peacekeeping role

Bangladesh has so far offered more troops than any other Muslim nation for a UN peacekeeping force for Lebanon, but a Hong Kong-based human rights group wants them barred because of the military's alleged poor record on home soil.

The Asian Human Rights Commission and its sister organisation, the Asian Legal Resource Centre, in a report released yesterday, claimed Bangladeshi soldiers and police routinely committed murder, torture and robbery.

They called on the UN to withdraw the more than 10,000 troops from Bangladesh already serving in peacekeeping operations, stop more being sent and eject the country from the new Human Rights Council until concerns have been dealt with. Bangladesh has offered to send 2,000 troops to Lebanon.

Bangladesh's consul-general to Hong Kong rejected the report as 'unfounded'.

The 140-page report, 'Lawless law enforcement and the parody of judiciary in Bangladesh', details 33 cases of killing, torture, rape, assault, robbery, intimidation and other abuses by police and members of the joint military-police Rapid Action Battalion, established in 2004.

Soldiers serving in the battalion, set up to tackle a series of bombings and other attacks by extremists, were said to be among frontrunners to serve as peacekeepers on foreign missions.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has praised Bangladesh's role in international peacekeeping. But report co-author and Asian Legal Resource Centre project officer Nick Cheesman said because the battalion operated 'completely outside the law', those moving from it to peacekeeping operations were a threat to civilians.