Online activists criticise moral ground of US for questioning Bangladesh’s human rights issues
Citing grave record of rights abuses inside the United States, a group of prominent online activists in Bangladesh questioned the motive behind such posturing.
The activists, in a webinar, slammed the US for "double standards" as it seeks to champion global rights issues overlooking dismal record at home.
Referring to a top US media outlet calling US police as "Fatal Force" and documenting how the "Federal Bureau of Investigation" (FBI) undercounted fatal police shootings by almost half, they questioned the "moral ground" of the US when it poses as the global rights champion and sermonises other countries.
Despite an unabated spree of violence against indigenous women, the arbitrary detentions in infamous Guantanamo Bay, the statutory restriction on freedom of assembly and excessive use of force by police against Blacks, the "self appointed custodian of human rights" conveniently overlook horrendous atrocities at home and seeks to take stock of human rights across the world, the activists added.
An investigation carried out by 'Washington Post' tilted as "Fatal Force", noted on September 29, that 1,049 people have been shot and killed by police in the past one year, they mentioned.
Alarmingly "the majority of victims were Blacks", the report said. Moreover, according to rights bodies, the superpower conveniently overlooked the cries of as many as 1.5 million people as they were pushed back at Mexico-US border. Moreover even school children have frequently fallen victim to gun violence, a stark contrast to its advocacy for rights issues.
Another study published in the Lancet, a peer reviewed journal, revealed "more than half of all police-involved killings in the US go unreported" while over in 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the US, according to the CDC.
These references surfaced during a webinar, organised by G Live, during its signature show "My opinion". It was attended by a prominent online activist Omi Rahman Pial, and Sufi Faruq Ibne Abubakar, a former IT head of a multinational company who leads Gurukul Online Learning Network.
Titled as, "USA's politics in the grab of human rights", this episode featured a range of documented evidence of blatant abuse of gun violence and a systematic racial victimisation of Blacks. Youtuber Nahid Helal also spoke at webinar.