Border killings
The joint meeting between BDR and BSF, reported in your daily on September 27, seems to have allowed both sides to openly discuss the issue of border killings by BSF. The Director General Srivastava of BSF considers the civilians being killed at the border as "criminals" and that they are being killed inside the "Indian territory". Does he imply therefore that it should be of no concern to Bangladesh? What kind of justification is this for killing civilian trespassers? It should be remembered that it is against international human rights law to kill an unarmed civilian, even if he/she is a smuggler or a criminal, and it holds independently of whichever territory he/she is found when being killed.
It sounds rather absurd that BSF finds "no alternative" but to "open fire" to protect their border from civilian trespassers. Instead of using lethal ammunitions could they not use anaesthetic /plastic projectiles that would make a human trespasser unable to flee?
A mere re-labelling of the killings at the border by the press as "deaths" (as desired by the Director General of BSF!) would be a travesty of reality. Instead, Director General Srivastava can, in all probability, do an enormous service both to the bilateral relation between the two neighbours and to the human rights law, by ordering his force to halt the use of sharp ammunitions against the civilian trespassers immediately, or replace them by non-lethal ones (should it be at all necessary) to catch the offenders.
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