By IANS
New York : The arrest and torture of journalist Tasneem Khalil by Bangladesh’s military intelligence highlights abuses under emergency rule and the interim government’s failure to restrain the security forces, Human Rights Watch said in a report Thursday.
The rights group also called upon the Bangladesh government as well as the country’s donors to urgently tackle the endemic problem of torture in the country.
The 39-page report, “The Torture of Tasneem Khalil,” graphically details Khalil’s 22-hour ordeal in May 2007 in Bangladesh’s clandestine detention and torture system – a set-up well known to the government, ordinary people, Bangladesh’s donors and diplomatic community.
“Rampant illegal detention and torture are clear evidence of Bangladesh’s security forces running amok,” said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch.
“Tasneem Khalil’s prominence as a critical journalist may have prompted his arrest, but it also may have saved his life. Ordinary Bangladeshis held by the security forces under the emergency rules have no such protections.”
At a detention centre operated by the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the military intelligence agency, officers brutally beat and threatened Khalil, a journalist for the English-language Daily Star, part-time consultant for Human Rights Watch and a news representative for CNN.
Demonstrating just how confident they are that they will not be held accountable, DGFI officials even brought Khalil to meet the editor of his paper before returning him to the detention centre for further beatings.
After his release and a month in hiding, Khalil fled Bangladesh for safety in Sweden, which granted asylum to him and his family. This report represents the first time that Khalil has spoken publicly of his experiences.
Late one night in May 2007, armed men presenting themselves as belonging to the “joint forces” came to Khalil’s apartment in central Dhaka. In front of his wife and infant, they pressed a gun against his lips, blindfolded him and brought him to a waiting car.
He was taken to an interrogation centre run by the DGFI, where he was held in a cell specially designed for torture.
Khalil was threatened with execution and repeatedly kicked and beaten with batons on the head, arms, abdomen and other parts of the body. He was forced to confess to – and implicate friends and colleagues in – anti-state and anti-military activity and smuggling of sensitive national security information to foreign organisations.
Khalil was punished for his criticism of the security forces’ role in extra-judicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests and other abuses.
After international and national pressure, Khalil was released after 22 hours in custody. He then had to go into hiding for a month before international pressure compelled the authorities to allow him to leave Bangladesh for asylum in Sweden.
Human Rights Watch said that tens of thousands of people have been arbitrarily detained by security forces since January 2007, when the current government came to power on a reform agenda. Many of these individuals were tortured in custody.
In its popular public campaign against corruption and abuse of political power, the government has routinely used torture to extract confessions or to gain information. Torture has also been used to punish and intimidate peaceful critics of the government and army’s role as the de facto rulers of the country.