We, the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), would like to express our deep concern over the disappearance of Mr. Salah Uddin on the evening of March 10, 2015. Uddin is the joint secretary general and spokesperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

According to Salah Uddin’s wife, Hasina Ahmed, a group of plainclothes policemen identified as members of the Detective Branch barged into a relative’s apartment in Uttara Sector-3 around 10:15 on Tuesday night. The policemen tied up the house helper who was present at the time and handcuffed Salah Uddin before whisking him away to one of the vehicles parked outside the apartment building.

Ahmed went to the Gulshan and Uttara West police stations to file a general diary about the incident and attempted to get information on Uddin’s whereabouts but was turned away and told that her complaint was baseless. The Rapid Action Battalion and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police likewise denied having knowledge about Uddin’s abduction and his whereabouts.

Hasina Ahmed also filed a writ with the High Court Division of the Bangladesh Supreme Court seeking its directive upon the government to produce Salah Uddin before the court within 24 hours. The High Court acted on the petition by asking concerned government and law enforcement officials why they should not be directed to find Salah Uddin and bring him before the Court. The Attorney General argued that the Court should not ask the government to produce Salah Uddin because he is not in police custody.

Salah Uddin’s case adds to a string of abductions of high-profile opposition politicians this year. Mahmud Rahman Manna, Convenor of the Nagorik Oikko (Citizen's Unity), was abducted on February 24. It took the Rapid Action Battalion twenty-one hours before officially announcing his arrest.

We call on the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh to investigate on Salah Uddin’s disappearance and take all appropriate measures to immediately surface him or at the minimum, inform his family of his whereabouts.

We wish to remind the government that consistent to its obligation as a state party to the UN Charter, it must “take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent and terminate acts of enforced disappearance in any territory under its jurisdiction” as provided in the 1992 Declaration for the Protection of All Persons Against Enforced Disappearances.

We would also like to impress upon the government that the acts which comprise enforced disappearance violate the prohibitions found in various international human rights instruments of which it is signatory to, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESR), Convention Against Torture (CAT), and the Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court (ICC).

Very sincerely,

MARY AILEEN DIEZ-BACALSO
Secretary-General

KHURRAM PARVEZ
Chairperson