Ivan Stefanek, a member of the European Parliament, wrote a letter to the European Union (EU) seeking sanctions against the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) for extrajudicial killings and disappearances. However, European Union (EU) Ambassador to Dhaka Charles Whiteley said he had no information on the matter.
He made the remarks at the Meet the Press event at Dhaka Reporters’ Unity (DRU) on Thursday.
Charles Whiteley said there was no information about a letter to the EU parliament regarding the ban on the RAB, it was a personal letter.
On this day, the head of the EU mission in Bangladesh did not agree to comment on the US sanctions.
At the beginning of the letter, Ivan Stefanek referred to the ‘unstable situation’ in Bangladesh and referred to the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. “Bangladesh’s ruling party is behaving inhumanely, including changing the election results and suppressing political dissent, which I want to bring to your attention,” he was quoted as saying by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
In the letter, Ivan Stefanek also referred to the “All the Prime Minister’s Men” report published in the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera media and the context of the Digital Security Act.
On December 10 last year, the State Department and the Department of the Treasury separately imposed sanctions on seven former and current senior RAB officials for serious human rights abuses. One month earlier, in November last year, 12 international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, wrote a letter to the UN Under-Secretary-General demanding that the RAB be banned from UN peacekeeping missions.