By IANS,
Dhaka : A visiting Indian human rights activist has urged Dhaka and New Delhi to resolve the issue of border guards shooting dead people infiltrating the porous frontier.
Kirity Roy, secretary of Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha, a non-governmental human rights organisation based in Kolkata, said that such killings should be stopped immediately for the sake of friendly relations between the two countries.
Roy made the observations while talking to New Age newspaper Saturday on the sidelines of a regional workshop on women human rights defenders organised by Odhikar.
In the first six months of 2009, India’s Border Security Force (BSF) killed some 60 unarmed Bangladeshi villagers on the borders, Roy said, adding: “What BSF does along the border is nothing but killing.”
The issue has been a long-standing one and figured prominently at last month’s talks between the BSF and the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) chiefs.
The Indian stand is that its personnel fired “in self-defence”.
Bangladesh and India have a 4,300 km difficult and riverine border along which the nightly movement of humans, goods and cattle is a regular phenomenon and a cause of irritation in bilateral ties.