Human Rights Watch letter to Bangladesh

Put better than anyone else can:

Bangladesh: Protecting Rights as Vital as Ending Corruption

(New York, August 1, 2007) – The Bangladeshi government should take the protection of human rights as seriously as the fight against corruption, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the chief advisor of the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh (http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/08/01/bangla16556.htm). The letter addresses problems of extrajudicial killings, torture, and arbitrary arrests.

For additional Human Rights Watch reporting on Bangladesh, please visit:

· Bangladesh country page: http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=asia&c=bangla

· “Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Torture and Extrajudicial Killings by Bangladesh’s Elite Security Force,” December 2006: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/bangladesh1206/

· Bangladesh chapter of Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2007: http://hrw.org/englishwr2k7/docs/2007/01/11/bangla14864.htm

For more information, please contact:

In London, Brad Adams: +44-790-872-8333 (mobile), or adamsb@hrw.org

In India, Meenakshi Ganguly: +91-9820036032 (mobile), or gangulm@hrw.org

Floods in Bangladesh

‘The Inheritance of Loss’, which won this year’s Booker prize is set in northern India, and there’s a scene around p.170 where one of the characters, an aging snob is reading a paper during monsoon season, and idly remarks that ‘the Bangladeshis are up their trees again’. I didn’t like the book, but that line of mild racism did stand out amidst the otherwise meandering pomposity. I didn’t think it was serious though.

 

However, the rain really has been coming down across South Asia and especially in Bangladesh this week, causing hundreds of deaths and millions of people to be stranded, and losing everything. Bangladesh in the rainy season has more surface water than the whole of Europe, but now half the country is submerged and it’s apparently going to get worse before it gets better.