Editorial
Diplomat on border killings
The issue needs serious handling
Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao's call for joint efforts towards putting an end to killings of people on the Indo-Bangladesh border draws attention once more to an old, known problem. To be sure, Ms. Rao's remarks, made to a group of Bangladeshi journalists in Delhi, are welcome and reflect India's concern over an issue that has exercised Bangladesh's mind over the years. That both Dhaka and Delhi need to sort out the problem through making sure that civilians, both Indian and Bangladeshi, are not pushed to unexpected death on the border, has never been in doubt. But the realities, particularly for Bangladesh, have been rather painful. With reports almost always coming in of some Bangladeshi national or other being shot by India's Border Security Force, it makes sense to ask if better measures cannot be taken to deal with the issue.
The Indian diplomat has noted that forty per cent of those killed on the border happen to be Indians. We are not quite sure how this figure has been arrived at. Even so, it raises the disturbing spectre of a border force, India's, inclined to be trigger-happy. For us in Bangladesh, all this talk of joint efforts to contain the problem is something we have heard earlier as well. There have been assurances aplenty on the need to tackle the issue. In equal measure, there have been all the claims and counter-claims flying back and forth between the two capitals on who did what to whom along the common frontier. Such attitudes have only revealed an absence of seriousness on the part of those concerned about the issue. In turn, there has been a lack of willingness to deal head-on with the problem.
All said and done, though, it is the expectation that Ms. Rao's sentiments will mark the beginning of a fresh new approach to the border killing issue. Let Bangladesh and India get down to serious talks, for shooting people dead on the border raises the question of human rights as well.
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