Bangladesh war on drugs kills 86, over 7,000 arrested

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Bangladesh police killed at least 86 people and arrested another 7,000 over the past month amid a massive crackdown on drug trafficking, officials said on Monday, vowing to “eradicate” the problem completely.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina approved the anti-narcotics campaign in early May to tackle the spread of ya ba, as methamphetamine is widely known in Asia, worth an estimated 3 billion US dollars annually, government officials say.

The drug is sourced from Myanmar's northeast and smuggled into neighboring Bangladesh.

This photograph taken on April 6, 2018, shows Bangladesh Border Guard (BGB) personnel searching a fishing boat for meth in Teknaf, along the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. /VCG Photo

"In recent times, drug dealing has increased and we feel that people should be alert and motivated to act against it," Devdas Bhattacharya, a senior police official, told reporters.

"The process will continue until it's eradicated totally."

He said police arrested six people on Sunday, including a 12-year-old boy from Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim community, who had carried 3,350 ya ba tablets to the capital, Dhaka.

Bangladesh has said an influx last year of Rohingya fleeing Buddhist-majority Myanmar is partly to blame for soaring methamphetamine use. But many Rohingya say their young people are being pushed into crime because they cannot legally work or, in many cases, get access to aid.

The 86 deaths occurred when police defended themselves in confrontations with suspected drug traffickers, said Mufti Mahmud Khan, a director of the police Rapid Action Battalion.

"It's their legal right to save themselves from the attack," Mufti told Reuters.

The campaign has prompted criticism from some international NGOs, but Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan insisted that police had not carried out any extra-judicial killings.

He said dozens of police had been injured in anti-drug operations.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said the anti-drugs drive was part of a campaign to intimidate it, but Khan also rejected that, saying ruling party members would not be spared if found guilty of drug crimes.

"We are determined to save our young generation from the curse of drugs," he said.

(Top picture: This photograph taken on April 6, 2018, shows small bags of "ya ba" recovered by Bangladesh Border Guard (BGB) from a passenger bus at a checkpost along the Teknaf-Cox's Bazar highway in Teknaf. /VCG Photo)

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Source(s): Reuters