Thursday, January 20, 2011

India-Bangladesh Border Killings

Blog #1

The recent killing of a 15 year old girl is the latest tragedy in the unsettled India-Bangladesh border issue. She was reportedly shot down by India’s Security Border Force while trying to cross the barbed wire fence that separates the two nations into Bangladesh. Human’s Right Watch, a human rights group, claims that India’s Security Border Force uses excessive force. They estimate that in the last 10 years the BSF have killed over 900 Bangladeshis and Indians, 72 of those in the past year. None of those killed were involved in serious crime, most were cattle traders or involved in petty cross border smuggling. India worries about terrorist infiltration through Bangladesh because in the past Islamist militants from Bangladesh have been involved in terrorist attacks against India. Officials from the two countries met in Dhaka and decided using rubber bullets could better solve the problem.

I believe that rubber bullets are definitely more humane then actual bullets. But if all their effort goes into patrolling the border, less effort is made to solve the root of their problem. These articles pointed out that India and Bangladesh have not always been at odds, and there have been improvements on the two countries ties. All out war between India and Bangladesh is not the main threat, it is the fact that all these killings of the common people are going on during a time of peace. While rubber bullets are a good step up from killing people, even less violent measures could be used while the two countries try to eliminate the threats they pose to each other.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110120/jsp/opinion/story_13464287.jsp

http://www.sify.com/news/bangladesh-protests-brutal-india-border-killing-news-international-lbrqucbbibf.html

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