U.S. Department of State
Office of the Secretary
2201 C St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20520
December 17, 2023
Dear Honorable Secretary Blinken,
The repeated commitment of President Joe Biden to ensure human rights, democracy, election integrity, as well as combating corruption and authoritarianism to be the US core foreign policy objectives generated great hope among the people of Bangladesh. There were hopes that their decades-long suffering under the oppressive autocratic regime of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina would come to an end. The consistent insistence of US Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter Haas, as well as other high level State Department officials, demanding the next election to be free, fair and participatory, strengthened their hopes and future aspirations.
The Coalition for Human Rights & Democracy in Bangladesh (CHRD Bangladesh) continues to campaign hard to fight for these issues in Bangladesh, which has been a serious defaulter on all these core aspects for the past 20 years of Sheikh Hasina’s combined rule.
Honorable Secretary, Bangladesh failed to qualify for the two Democracy Summits organized by the United States in 2021 and 2022. In addition, the US imposed sanctions on the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and a few of its top officials in 2021 for serious human rights violations. In May 2023, the State Department announced Visa Restrictions on the election offenders. The people of the country and CHRD Bangladesh greatly welcomed those steps. Unfortunately, the Bangladesh government under Sheikh Hasina has not complied even after these punitive measures were put in place and continued flagrantly flouting human rights and democratic practices, at times with increasing intensity as if in defiance.
With the renewed and intensified crackdown on the political opposition since October 28, 2023, and the announcement of the election schedule for January 7, 2024, to be managed by the corrupt and authoritarian regime, all the hopes of the people of Bangladesh seem to have come to a standstill, if not diminished altogether. They, along with the rest of the democratic world, see the regime proceeding towards another rigged election as it did in 2014 and 2018, and award itself another 5 years of autocratic and oppressive rule.
In a Joint Statement on December 12, 2023, seven human rights organizations, including Robert F Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR), Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum Asia), International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearance (ICAED) and others said that following the October crackdown, the government of Sheikh Hasina “has massively and arbitrarily detained more than 20,000 individuals” belonging to the political opposition, “with 837 fabricated charges, for which bail is consistently denied despite valid grounds.” In addition, 17 opposition activists were killed and 8, 249 people were injured following the October brutalities that included “beating, electric shocks, waterboarding, deliberate shooting to maim, mock executions and forced nudity. (Please see https://rfkhumanrights.org/press/bangladesh-urgent-call-to-safeguard-human-rights-and-democracy-ahead-of-january-elections).
The 170 million people of Bangladesh continue to suffer greatly under the oppressive steamrollers. Authoritarian rulers do not bother about the fate of the people and are only interested in securing their seats of power by any means, even at the expense of mortgaging the country to anyone who can ensure their continuity in authority. The people of Bangladesh have a feeling that they have been abandoned and sacrificed at the altar of a continued autocratic ruler.
Honorable Secretary, CHRD Bangladesh fervently seeks your kind attention to the glaring human rights, democracy and election integrity issues in Bangladesh. The people of the country seek the United States to help bail them out of the crises they have been thrown into under the current authoritarian administration led by Sheikh Hasina.
The people of Bangladesh continue to repose their hopes and trust in the United States of America, the leader of the democratic and free world.