Law minister Anisul Huq claimed on Sunday that the country has seen the positive impact of the rule of law.
He also said that they are moving towards the correct direction to resolve the case backlog.
While talking to the press at the Secretariat on his first day at office after taking oath as the law minister again, Anisul said that they had formulated a number of laws during the last tenure of the government along with the law related to the Election Commission that helped to hold a fair election on January 7.
A day after the election, Volker Türk, United Nations high commissioner for human rights, on January 8 called on Bangladesh’s newly elected government to take step to renew the country’s commitment to democracy and human rights, voicing concern that the environment for the polls was marred by violence and repression of opposition candidates and supporters.
Asked, Anisul said that UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk had made his statement on Bangladesh because of ‘informational errors’.
‘I will speak to the UN human rights commissioner because I think he made the statement based on informational errors,’ said Anisul.
The UN rights chief said that nearly 25 thousand opposition supporters have been arrested, including key opposition party leaders, since 28 October.
The UN also pointed out that at least 10 opposition supporters reportedly died, or were killed, in custody in the past two months, raising serious concerns about possible torture or harsh conditions of detention.
The law minister argued that the leaders and activists of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and also of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami were arrested on specific allegations.
He said that cases related to political violence in 2013 have matured now and trials of those cases are being carried out.
‘Courts hold the trial in which the government has no interference,’ the law minister said.
The Human Rights Watch on January 11 in its annual report said that although some rights abuses, including enforced disappearances, dropped for a period immediately after the United States had imposed sanctions against the Rapid Action Battalion in 2021, abuses by security forces appear to have resumed.
Asked, the minister declined to comment.
