Govt found 10 from UN missing people list: Shahriar
State minister for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam on Tuesday said that they have found at least 10 people from the list of 76 victims of enforced disappearance provided by the United Nations.
"We had formed a committee after our agencies got the list of 76 people from the human rights organisation of the UN and submitted the names of 10 people in Geneva. Of the rest 66 people, 28 have multiple cases against them," he told a press briefing at foreign ministry on the recent visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
The accused and convicts very often flee to the neighbouring countries and hide there, said Shahriar Alam, adding: the government has been trying to find out the rest of the disappeared people.
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Last year in Geneva of Switzerland, the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearance said that 76 people were missing in Bangladesh.
The state minister also claimed that the list has names involved in the cases which are 20-22 years old, when Awami League was not the ruling party. For example, the case of Kalpana Chakma.
"We have been held accountable for the case (Kalpana Chakma). We are engaged in that case too," Shahriar Alam said.
He then referred to the incident of a female student who remained missing for 45 days and her mother organised a press briefing. But she was not missing, rather she got married with her boyfriend, he added.
Answering a question, he said that 10 families of the missing people do not have any information.
Criticising a section of the civil society members, he said that they had misinformed the UN representative.
The state minister said that a civil society or a group of civil society with political intention is not healthy.
"Through this visit we have been able to expose the section of civil society with representation of the power politics part," he added.
He blamed a section of the local and international organisations and the lobbyists working on behalf of BNP and Jamaat for providing misinformation continuously and purposefully.
