UN report on enforced disappearances in Bangladesh replete with errors

A UN report itemizing “victims of enforced disappearances” in Bangladesh is riddled with mind-boggling inaccuracies that expose the worldwide physique’s over-reliance on biased NGOs identified for faking instances of human rights violations.

One such sufferer listed by the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances in Bangladesh is a prime secessionist chief from Manipur who resides along with his household in his ancestral residence in Bangladesh after serving his jail time period in India.

The UN Working Group identifies Sanayaima Rajkumar, the chairman of the Manipur-based extremist group United National Liberation Front (UNLF) as a sufferer of enforced disappearance in Bangladesh.

The UNLF chairman whose actual identify is Rajkumar Meghen (Sanaiyama is his celebration alias) operated in Bangladesh beneath lively authorities patronage through the BNP-JAMAAT regime and the military-backed caretaker regime.

But he fled Bangladesh and took refuge in Nepal after the Sheikh Hasina authorities took cost in January 2009 and unleashed a crackdown in opposition to northeast Indian rebels, resulting in the arrest of some prime leaders who had been then handed over to Indian authorities.

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Meghen was arrested by the police from the East Champaran district of Bihar when he tried to enter the nation from Nepal on November 30, 2010.

He was convicted on sedition expenses for “waging a war against the legally elected government in India” and handed a 10-year jail time period.

Meghen, now 78, was launched from a jail in Guwahati on November 11, 2019 after he served his time period.

The insurgent chief returned residence to Imphal after having lived underground for 44 years. He now lives in his ancestral home along with his spouse Ibengmunshi Devi, son Mei Chinglen and daughter-in-law Brinda, a former police officer who later contested elections.

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Meghen made enormous story in India, however the UN Working Group itemizing enforced disappearances in Bangladesh missed out on all that and put him on the Bangladesh checklist.

How may an UN group make such an enormous mistake? The reply is easy – they only glided by instances of enforced disappearances supplied by native Bangladesh-based NGOs with out crosschecking information.

Some unsubstantiated media reviews in 2010 stated Meghen was arrested by the Bangladesh police and quietly handed over to India – a cost each Dhaka and Delhi have denied.

Meghen, throughout his trial, didn’t contest the truth that he was arrested in Bihar, though he admitted throughout his interrogation by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that he had operated out of Bangladesh earlier than 2010 and even smuggled arms to his fighters in Manipur after bringing them into Bangladesh from Southeast Asia.

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The UN Working Group report additionally lists Keithellakpam Nabachandra alias Chilheiba as a “victim of enforced disappearances” in Bangladesh. Nabachandra is a “major” within the UNLF armed wing.

The Border Security Force, or BSF, stated that they arrested him in 2015 as he tried to enter India by the Sylhet-Meghalaya border close to Dawki.

Some media reviews in Manipur stated Nabachandra was arrested in Dhaka by the Bangladesh Police and quietly handed over to Indian borderguards – a cost India has denied.

Nabachandra was handed over to the Manipur Police on March 17, 2015 and is now going through trial.

Bangladesh officers say the crackdown in opposition to armed northeast Indian rebel teams was a part of Sheikh Hasina’s dedication to zero tolerance in opposition to terrorism.

“This absolutely upset some Bangladesh human rights teams with shut connections to the BNP-JAMAAT authorities which had sheltered these rebels. So they started passing individuals like Meghen and Nabachandra as victims of enforced disappearances to place stress on the Hasina authorities,” said Sukharanjan Dasgupta, an author.

In fact, the UN Working Group depended on controversial NGOs like Odhikar, run by Adilur Rahman Khan Shuvro, a former deputy attorney general during the BNP-JAMAAT regime, for data. Other similar organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also came under scanner for “brazen advocacy” in favour of self-confessed war criminals during the trial.

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Even when the rabidly radical Hifazat-e Islam, in league with the Jamaat, called for an abrupt end to girls’ education and dubbed westerners as apostates, and their cadres ran amok on the streets of Dhaka in 2013, Odhikar blew up the casualty data during the police crackdown on Hifazat, as exposed by a number of top media outlets in Bangladesh back then.

“But it’s merely disgraceful of the UN Working Group to just accept such bogus instances like Meghen’s. It has some explaining to do as to how they’ll checklist somebody as disappeared when the insurgent chief is going through trial in India after arrest in India,” Dasgupta stated.

“Neither Megan nor Nabachandra entered Bangladesh with any valid documents. They sneaked back into Bangladesh during the BNP-Jamaat regime to continue their arms struggle. So how can an international rights body like the UN clamour for this when both of them have Indian citizenship?” he requested.

Last December in Geneva, the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearance stated that 76 individuals are lacking in Bangladesh and referred to as for a probe into the instances.

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