Extra-judicial killing and accountability

Does this man standing guard make you feel safer?

But after a few days a preliminary investigation by Scotland Yard revealed that the man was innocent and had no connection with the bombing. Consequently it created a huge public outcry in England. Human rights organisations raised their concern. All leading British newspapers came up with stories and commentaries castigating the incident. Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, apologised publicly for the loss of an innocent life.

No responsible person in Britain tried to justify the killing, using the horrible incident of London bombing as an alibi. Nobody said that it was natural for police to shoot a person because of the pressure and stress they are undergoing as a result of the bombing. Nobody said that the media was doing too much by raising concern about the death of a foreigner, a third world country citizen. There was none to support this police action because everyone knows that killing people without trial is a sin in a democratic society. The police team which took the life is now under investigation by The Independent Police Complaint Commission.

This British story just reminded me about the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) which kills "criminals" in Bangladesh from time to time for the sake of law enforcement. Rab already killed dozens of "criminals" along with some innocent people. It claims that none of the people was killed intentionally. Rather they were victims of "crossfires" or died "in the line of fire." Whatever phrases Rab uses to clean its hands fail in the public eye. Many leading newspapers of the country have already documented the accounts of many eyewitnesses, proving the Rab claims false. I was thinking, can we dare to ask our minister responsible for Rab for an apology for the killings committed by Rab? As a newly democratic nation are we getting used to accepting extra-judicial killing as normality? The answer to the first question is "no." The answer to the second question is unfortunately "yes" when we take into account the reactions of the ruling party high-ups and their supporters.

Except for a few, many of us seem to be unapologetic about the killings carried out by Rab. Our ministers and other ruling party politicians boast about Rab by saying that it has been able to restrain some criminal activities in the country and believe that citizens from all walks of life approve Rab actions. If they are true, we can assume that the crime rate in the country has fallen. Has it really happened? There are no independent or reliable statistics to support that the crime rate has fallen. The police data on crime which are occasionally made available always show one trend -- the decline of the number of crimes. However, the rising numbers of robberies and homicides make people skeptical about the claim.

After talking to some friends in Dhaka, I realised that many people are definitely happy with the performance of Rab and they feel that Rab is doing the right thing. I have begun to wander why people tend to support extra-judicial killing. I believe people are just happy to see that some form of action has been taken against criminals. They do not judge the merit of the action. Rab killed some identified criminals who terrorised people in various places of the country. People were happy to see the death of these criminals. However, there were also counter tendencies, people were scared to see the death of some innocent civilians.

Security is a basic human need. People need to be felt secured to do their jobs, businesses, and other day to day activities. People deserve to live in a country free from criminals. The police have failed to ensure this. The efficiency of the police has been minimised by the corrupt practices of some police personnel who call the shots in the police department. Some of our politicians also harbour criminals to achieve their narrow political goals. As a quick fix to this problem the BNP government created the Rab in 2003 and gave it enormous power. If we are willing to give the government benefit of the doubt we can say that the Rab could manage to terrorise some of the criminals.

Killing criminals rather than bringing them to justice may be a short time solution to a chronic problem of the society. However, if the sources of illegal arms cannot be shut down and the political patrons of criminals remain at large, the death of some criminals might intimidate other criminals, but will not stop the breeding of the next generations of criminals.

Moreover, extra-judicial killing is a risky business for many good reasons. It is a violation of human rights. Every individual deserves a fair trial. No person is a criminal until the court says so. Extra-judicial killings always involve a risk of getting innocent people killed. We have already seen some instances of this. The killing of a criminal before trial also deprives law enforcement agencies from knowing important information about a crime. Usually no democratic country in the world encourages its law enforcement agencies to kill a criminal. If killing of criminals was a good solution, the countries of Europe and North America which have a solid record of maintaining law and order would do it regularly.

Apologists for Rab killings often argue that the situation of Bangladesh is different from that of developed countries. And these countries do not have as many criminals as Bangladesh has. Fair enough. But it is necessary to think about why it is so. Briefly, the number of crimes and criminals is high in third world countries like Bangladesh because of abject poverty, joblessness, and hopelessness. Robbing people on the street or at home or workplaces seems to be the easiest way for a handful of youths to make money. The inactivity, inefficiency, and inadequacy of laws and law enforcement agencies gives them this false impression.

The failure of the police to maintain law and order in the country prompted the creation of Rab. Compared to the police, Rab members are well trained, well paid, and well equipped. But the success of Rab seems to be very minimal. The Rab threat did not deter criminals from killing popular and prominent parliament members like SAMS Kibria and Ahsanullah Master. Rab could be more effective or useful for the society if it encourages its members to find out the sources of illegal arms, identify the political patrons of criminals, and meticulously collect evidence of criminal offences.

In Bangladesh many criminals elude the legal system by using the loopholes and bribing law. The government can rectify the laws and the Rab members can demonstrate their efficiency by making strong cases against criminals. Rab can develop a forensic lab of its own to collect evidences from crime scenes, test DNA, and can develop databases of criminals and create a finger-print database. No criminal can easily get off the hook, if all kinds of evidence of his criminal activity are presented before the court.

Rab has to stop extra-judicial killing at least for the sake of saving innocent lives. And it needs to be accountable to a legitimate body for its actions. If the government fails to make Rab accountable to an independent body there will always be some dangers lurking for us. Think, how would you feel if someone in your family who is innocent is killed by Rab out of suspicion or based on false information? What would happen if the ruling party intends to use Rab for its narrow political purposes? What should we do if Rab begins to be dominated by corrupt elements the way the police are?

The Daily Star reported on July 29 that a new law has been drafted to discipline Rab members and pointed out the limitations of the proposed law. Despite all its inherent problems, I believe it is a good start in developing mechanisms to control Rab members who have already engaged in some unlawful activities. Alongside making such laws we need an independent body, like the British Independent Police Complaint Commission, which will have power and people's confidence to investigate any unlawful activity performed by Rab. Newspapers reported that Rab itself reviewed all the deaths occurred due to the actions of its members and did not find any fault. Nobody should be surprised to hear this. In most cases law enforcement bodies in Bangladesh do not find faults in their own actions.

The writer is a faculty (on leave) at the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, University of Dhaka and is pursuing a Ph.D in Communication at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.