Human rights is a universal concept that has been learnt but actions from certain rights bodies have exposed the fight to uphold these rights is not driven by equality. The recent spate of action shows a powerful nation like the US can get a free pass while crushing student protest with mighty and well-equipped police forces.
In the last couple of days, thousands of unarmed and peaceful students were denied their freedom of assembly in US. Rather armed NYPD officials were unleashed on the campus who let loose terror on these innocent dissenters. Armed officials broke into the campus and launched a brutal crackdown. Students were shoved, kicked, slammed and arrested at the will of these officers.
For days these campuses saw brute force including the usage of chemical spray and physical assault inflicted on the students with full impunity for the armed officers. The scale of atrocity by the police has stunned the world as NYPD in a tweet basked in the glory for this crackdown but the deafening silence by self-appointed rights bodies brought the hypocrisy to light once more.
The tragedy is such a display of repression by law enforcers fell on deaf ears with regards to those called rights bodies who ran away from even raising any voice against this police action, a further testament that these organizations are not neutral and credible while their clamors on rising hope for human rights is highly selective and revolved around certain agenda.
Importantly, these same groups of so-called rights bodies like Human Rights Watch and AMNESTY International refused to condemn law enforcers’ actions on the protesters, exposing a clear double standard over the hue and cry often raised by these groups.
Expectedly, all these groups even remained hyperactive in swaying global perception of the impunity of arson attackers in Bangladesh belonging to the opposition alliance BNP and Jamaat.
Both the so-called bodies sought sanction on Bangladesh law enforcers but refused to condemn a series of violence orchestrated by the opposition including firebombing of vehicles and imposition of blockade that inflicted heavy causality toll and incurred losses worth billions in the economy.
Even when local rights activists and minority leaders likened a call by Tarique Rahman – the acting chief of BNP convicted in a litany of cases including money laundering and the 2004 grenade attack on Sheikh Hasina – from London that “the fate of the country will be decided on the streets” to “an instigation to trigger a fresh spell of violence”. But these foreign groups refrained from offering a single comment on such grave call for violence.
And the duplicity of these bodies became so obvious that former employees of Amnesty International’s Bangladesh chapter pointed out obvious bias in such a motivated campaign echoing the tone of the same opposition that unleashed terror on streets to stop people from exercising their voting rights.
https://en.somoynews.tv/news/2024-01-02/amnesty-suffers-from-bias-says-ex-staff
Also this attack has once again exposed the double standard on the part of the same Joe Biden Administration that bragged about making human rights a cornerstone to its policy and lectured almost every country, except a few allies, on freedom of assembly and no use of force on dissenting views.
In addition to this carnage on general students, the continuous backing by the Biden Administration to Israel: funding, supply of arms, thwarting international pressure on Israel yet these organizations did not even place an appeal before the UN to impose sanction on US. It seems for Bangladesh keeping the public safe from arson attackers and militants is a crime but in the US attacking and jailing innocent students who were denied their rights to freedom of assembly is not a crime, according to these organizations, further indication that these bodies does not hold any credibility or relevance.