Dhaka: A top-level US delegation arrived here Tuesday to discuss issues related to human rights, the Rohingya crisis, and the political situation in Bangladesh ahead of the January 2024 elections, an official said.
The US State Department delegation led by Uzra Zeya, under-secretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, is on a three-day visit to the country as Dhaka’s ties with Washington are going through a rough patch.
She is accompanied by the assistant secretary for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, Donald Lu, and the deputy assistant administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Asia, Anjali Kaur.
A Bangladesh foreign ministry official, familiar with the tour, said the delegation was likely to discuss future plans for more than a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who are in camps in Bangladesh.
Foreign Secretary Masud Momen earlier said Zeya was a relatively senior US official and her mandated area “is quite wide”.
No official schedule of the delegation’s engagement was made available to the media yet but the US embassy officials said Zeya was likely to call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The US embassy officials said the delegation was likely to hold talks with the law and home ministers, the premier’s private sector and investment adviser, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders, civil society figures, foreign ministry officials, and visit the Rohingya camps in southeastern Cox’s Bazar.
Over a million Muslim minority Rohingyas took makeshift refuge in the camps while the majority of them fled their home in neighbouring Myanmar’s Rakhine state in August 2017 to evade a brutal military crackdown, which the UN called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
“The delegation will go straight to Cox’s Bazar early Wednesday to meet the Rohingya people while most of their other engagements will take place Thursday in Dhaka,” an embassy source said.
The US delegation arrived nearly two months after Washington May 25 imposed a new visa policy, particularly for Bangladesh, threatening sanctions and visa bans against officials if the US determined they were “obstructing” the democratic process for the 2024 elections.
The US questioned human rights situation and political inclusiveness while last year it slapped a visa restriction on several current and former officials of the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on charges of alleged extra-judicial killings.
Hasina sternly criticised the US gesture and in a recent press conference said she believed the US did not want her government to continue in power.
She also hinted the US wanted military access to St. Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal, an allegation the US State Department quickly denied, saying they did not discuss taking over the offshore island and that Washington respects Bangladesh’s sovereignty.
In regard to the sanction, Hasina June 21 said her country was not afraid of sanctions and that she instructed concerned authorities to stop buying anything from countries that impose sanctions on Bangladesh.
The US sent the delegation at the time when a six-member European Union (EU) pre-election observation team, which is on a visit to Bangladesh, discussed Tuesday in a meeting with Attorney General AM Amin Uddin the electoral laws in the country.
“During the meeting, we discussed electoral laws in the country,” Uddin told reporters following the hour-long meeting held at the attorney general’s office in the Supreme Court complex where opposition pro-BNP lawyers staged a protest.
He said the EU representatives wanted to know how the election-related Representation of the People Order (RPO) law and laws regarding criminal and civil rights were being implemented in Bangladesh and how useful these laws were in keeping the law and order situation normal during the elections.
Witnesses said the pro-opposition lawyers staged a demonstration holding placards and chanting slogans – “We want justice, no more Hasina, we want caretaker (government), no more Hasina, we want a free fair election” as the delegation was heading out of the office.
Bangladesh authorities have ordered an intensified security vigil as both the ruling Awami League and opposition BNP are set to stage two grand rallies in the capital Wednesday, an attempt to demonstrate their public support when the two Western delegations are visiting the country.
PTI
