“Whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another.” – George Herbert
Bangladesh has taken an increasingly regressive approach on human rights in the last few years. In December 2021, allegations surfaced online that the Inspector General of Bangladesh Police and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) officers engaged in violations of international law, one being the barbarous act of extrajudicial killings.
The Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, and Arbitrary Executions states that when citizens are “deprived of life in the absence of lawful self-defense or judicial process, such deprivation constitutes an unlawful extrajudicial killing.” Yet, Nazmul Ahasan claims in his January 2022 paper that instances of deadly police violence in the United States lack premeditation and, therefore, are not extrajudicial executions. A couple of key questions arise from this statement. First, did the minimization of police officers’ unjustified killings of Americans to maximize coverage of the RAB’s unjustified killings of Bangladeshis need to be said? Second, did it need to be said by Ahasan? Before I answer these two questions, I will peruse Ahasan’s arguments and compare them with existing reports and data. Any arguments in Ahasan’s paper not raised here are conceded.
First, Ahasan argues that United States police killings lack the criterion of premeditation and, therefore, are not extrajudicial executions. He has a point in thinking this because the United States is thought to influence the world on human rights. Extrajudicial executions in the United States sounds too unbelievable to Ahasan; therefore, they must not be true. Whether Ahasan believes it or not, extrajudicial executions in the United States are an unimpeachable reality. Even though Ahasan acknowledges that the United States has a racial profiling problem, and concedes that police traffic stops are a common precursor for police to murder Blacks and minorities, he omits that such an arbitrary deprivation of life gives rise to an extrajudicial execution.
Second, Ahasan claims that United States government officials “do not deny its own police killing problem and ha[ve] sought to deal with it through an open and democratic process.” However, Ahasan conveniently omits that local police agencies often dismiss responsibility for police killings when they state an officer acted as a federal agent. As the International Commission of Experts (Experts) point out, officers continue to work in police agencies because those agencies fail to take responsibility for disciplinary actions.
It is quite painful to read Ahasan’s declaration that the United States has a “transparent legal system,” as nothing could be further from the truth. Independent investigations are a rarity in America, despite being a striking feature of a transparent legal system. The United States has no independently elected body that investigates police use of deadly force, or monitors institutionalized racism within all law enforcement agencies. In conjunction with the fact the United States legal system lacks transparency, one should also not forget that in many cases, the public is unable to ascertain whether departments mount an investigation on a police officer’s use of deadly force. Even when departments conduct an investigation, evidence shows the public is unaware of the determination they made.
Ahasan is right; United States media on police killings is extensive and critical. While Ahasan shatters the lens of the Bangladesh press with this hurled stone, he is nonetheless driven to toil as he tries to show there is no censorship in America. To illustrate this point one need only refer to the Columbia Journalism Review, which found the 140 assaults on journalists in 2021 outpaced the assaults in the previous four years. In 2020, reports also showed police arrested and detained 142 journalists. If the behavior illustrated above does not meet the definition of censorship, then what behavior does?
The third claim Ahasan makes in his paper is that monetary damages to the family members of the victims deter police officers’ deadly use of force. For this argument to stand, Ahasan needs to show monetary damages are the result of a decrease in civilian deaths by the hands of police. Since no database exists to track lawsuits across all states, the argument that payments to civilians deter police deadly use of force is beyond Ahasan’s reach. Another important issue is that data collected over the last nine years show a consistent rise in the number of civilians killed by police. For instance, in 2020 police killed approximately 1,127 Americans. Then in 2021, the number of deaths rose to 1,136. These findings converge with the idea that monetary damages do not disincentivize police killings.
Even if we are to assume monetary damages are a measure of accountability, the fact that civilian payouts for police malfeasance are withdrawn from general taxpayer funds, and not police department budgets, demonstrates insufficient accountability. It is also worth mentioning that when families do seek monetary damages, the doctrine of qualified immunity often blocks them. Indeed, distinguished Clinical Professor of Law, Penny M. Venetis, stresses the point that “qualified immunity has rendered redress under 42 USC § 1983 nearly unattainable” and that “its application is contrary to the legislative intent.” As it happens, the United States Supreme Court decided last year not to review the doctrine. Thus, it seems more accurate to say redress for police malfeasance will be significantly more unattainable.
As to the fourth claim, Ahasan pleads the case that impunity is non-existent in the United States. If Ahasan knew what many Americans knew about grand juries—that they meet in secret with prosecutors—he may have left that assertion out of his paper. The tone of Ahasan’s paper further makes evident that he is unfamiliar with how prosecutors in the United States have systematically misused grand juries to provide police officers with impunity. In 2016, the IACHR found United States law and practices regarding police killings soared to high levels of impunity. As a result, the IACHR urged the United States to conduct “exhaustive, impartial, independent, effective and prompt investigations.” Although human rights bodies have repeatedly advised the United States to bring its domestic law into compliance with international law and standards on use of force practices, the United States has failed to comply.
So why did the United States government hit Bangladesh for extrajudicial executions despite the same a stone’s throw from Washington? It did so because when international leaders convene to discuss human rights violations across the world, they implicate Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, rather than the United States. Thus, Bangladesh’s implication that the international community applies a different set of standards for the United States as it pertains to extrajudicial executions is not wrong. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find an action launched against the United States before the Committee Against Torture, despite data showing Americans die more by extrajudicial executions than comparable countries.
All this points to the conclusion that Ahasan’s minimization of police officers’ unjustified killings of Americans to maximize coverage of the RAB’s unjustified killings of Bangladeshis did not need to be said. The damning tone in Ahasan’s paper influences the United States police officers’ decisions to commit extrajudicial executions and frame them as a different matter. Ahasan may have thought his voice highlighted the matters in Bangladesh, but what it actually did was pit African Americans against Bangladeshis in the hashtag game of whose life actually matters the most. So, argumentum ad lapidem to Ahasan for dismissing extrajudicial executions in the United States as absurd.
Quianna Canada is a BA student at the University of Arizona, an anti-racism human rights activist, a humanist, and a country condition researcher.
Suggested citation: Quianna Canada, House of Shards: US Hits Bangladesh for Police Killings Despite the Same a Stone’s Throw From Washington, JURIST – Student Commentary, January 31, 2022, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2022/01/quianna-canada-us-police-killings-bangladesh-critique/.
This article was prepared for publication by Katherine Gemmingen, Commentary Co-Managing Editor. Please direct any questions or comments to her at commentary@jurist.org
