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Always be ready to protect constitution, sovereignty

Human Rights Report
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday asked the Bangladesh Army to be always ready to face any threat from home and abroad to protect the constitution and sovereignty of the motherland. "For protecting the sacred constitution and sovereignty of the motherland, you have to be ever ready to face any threat from inside and outside keeping the unity intact," she said. The PM was addressing a programme on the occasion of raising of flags of Bangladesh Army's eight units and organisations.
She joined the event, which took place at Sheikh Hasina Cantonment in Lebukhali of Patuakhali, virtually from the Gono Bhaban.
Hasina said Bangladesh Army is the symbol of confidence and trust and it has to step forward through gaining the trust of the people. She said the first need for army personnel, as members of the Army, is professionalism and training. "To attain this desired standard of professionalism, you all have to be skilled professionally, and also have to maintain honest and benignant life imbued with religious and social values." The premier hoped that army members would sincerely discharge their responsibilities maintaining its key driving forces, including confidence in higher leadership, mutual trust, compassion, brotherhood, dutifulness, responsibility and above all, maintaining discipline. Hasina said the government wanted that members of the armed forces would perform their duties towards the country and its people with responsibility, dutifulness and affection to the motherland.
About the country's foreign policy, introduced by Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, "Friendship to all, malice to none", the PM said Bangladesh does not want war with anyone, rather it wants friendship with all.
"With these friendly relations, we want to develop Bangladesh socioeconomically."
 

Extrajudicial Killings: 10 US senators for sanctions on Rab high-ups

Human Rights Report:

Ten US senators from the Republican and the Democratic parties have called on the Trump administration to impose targeted sanctions on "senior commanders" of Bangladesh's Rab, which they said have reportedly killed more than 400 people extrajudicially since 2015.
Senator Bob Menendez, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Todd Young led eight other senators to make the call in a bipartisan letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin.
The senators urged the administration to impose targeted sanctions on senior Rab commanders under applicable authorities, including the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and Section 7031(c) of the FY 2020 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, according to a statement the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations issued on Tuesday. Contacted, Rab Director (legal and media) Lt Col Ashik Billah said Rab was not involved in extrajudicial killings under any circumstances. All Rab operations adhere to specific rules and regulations. "Basically, occasional incidents of exchange of shooting take place with armed miscreants during Rab's operational activities," he told The Daily Star yesterday.
The bipartisan senators said since 2015, the Rab has reportedly extrajudicially killed more than 400 people, and the Rab has been credibly implicated in many cases of enforced disappearances and torture. "These violations appear to be part of a broader crackdown on dissent by the ruling Awami League, and the Rab has not been held to account," said the letter. "Extrajudicial killings by the Rab have reportedly spiked since the Government of Bangladesh began its 'war on drugs' in the months ahead of the December 2018 elections."
UN experts, including the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution wrote that the 'war on drugs' 'appears to be a deliberate policy of extrajudicial killings' and urged the Bangladesh government to end it and respect the rule of law and human rights, it said.
In nearly all cases, the senators said, the Rab claims that such extrajudicial killings result from "gunfights" or "crossfire," but documentation from reputable human rights organisations demonstrates that victims were often in Rab custody when they were killed, and many of their bodies show signs of death by execution, rather than a gunfight.
 

Constitution for socialism, democracy    
 

Human Rights Report:
Winding up the general debate on the Constitution Bill in the Gono Parishad today, Dr Kamal Hossain, minister for law and parliamentary affairs, answers critics with a scholarly exposition of the draft constitution -- its contents and philosophy. His principal contention is that the parliament is supreme, and a parliament democratically elected by a politically conscious people cannot be relegated to any other organ, not even judiciary. He denies that the commitment to socialism has not been spelt out in the draft constitution. He says that Articles 10, 13, 14,15 and others have clearly defined the responsibility of the state for securing various economic rights of the citizens.
BANGABANDHU'S MESSAGE TO TITO CONVEYED
President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito receives Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad today. They have a friendly talk and Abdus Samad conveys to President Tito a personal message of Prime Minister Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
BANGLADESH ENTERS COLOMBO PLAN
The official committee of the Colombo Plan Consultative Committee today brushes aside an objection raised by South Vietnam and seats Bangladesh as an observer to the meeting. The question of Bangladesh's full membership would be placed before the Consultative Committee in November, 1972.
BHASHANI'S PARTY WILL CONTEST ELECTIONS
NAP Chief Maulana Bhashani announces in a press conference today that his party will contest the next general elections and set candidates in all the seats. He urges the government to ensure free and fair elections and demands equal opportunity for projecting the views of the opposition parties in radio and television. He further says that he is opposed to any election alliance with any other party.

 

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Japan PM Suga to announce plan for fresh stimulus package to ease pandemic pain
 

Human Rights Report:
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga gives his first policy speech in parliament as an extraordinary session opens in Tokyo, Japan on October 26. Photo: Reuters/file
Reuters, Tokyo
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will announce next week a plan for fresh stimulus to help the recession-stricken economy shake off the coronavirus crisis, four government and ruling party sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Although the size of the package has yet to be decided, some ruling party lawmakers have already called for one of about 10 trillion yen ($95.51 billion) to cushion the blow from the pandemic. The bulk of the package will consist of about 7 trillion yen left over from a 10 trillion yen pool set aside to meet emergency needs to combat the pandemic, the sources told Reuters. The rest will be made up of new spending, they added.
The total size of the package will likely be smaller than a combined $2.2 trillion rolled out in two earlier stimulus packages this year, they said.
"It's better to avoid making Japan's fiscal cliff even steeper" by ramping up near-term spending too much, one of the sources said.
The package is likely to include extensions to existing programmes offering subsidies to help companies keep jobs and address funding strains, the sources said. The government is also expected to extend past January a campaign offering discounts to domestic travel to rescue the country's tourism industry, the sources said. A third extra budget will be compiled around mid-December to fund part of the package, they added. After posting its worst postwar contraction in the second quarter, Japan's economy is expected to have rebounded in the three months through September. But the recovery has been patchy and fragile, as continued weakness in consumption and capital expenditure offset a rebound in exports and output, keeping policymakers under pressure to top up fiscal and monetary support.

WHO reports 3rd straight daily record

Human Rights Report:
The World Health Organization's coronavirus dashboard yesterday showed a third consecutive daily record high in the number of new confirmed cases.
The WHO's complete figures for Saturday showed that 465,319 cases were confirmed to the UN health agency during the day, topping the 449,720 recorded on Friday and the 437,247 logged on Thursday.
The WHO has warned that some countries are on a "dangerous track", with too many witnessing an exponential increase in cases. Within each week, the pattern of cases being reported to the WHO tends to spike towards Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and dip around Tuesday and Wednesday.
According to the WHO's figures, there have been more than 42.3 million confirmed cases of the respiratory disease, while nearly 1.15 million people have lost their lives, including 6,570 on Saturday.




 

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