US Senators Ben Cardin, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Cory Booker, have issued a statement condemning the violent suppression of student protests in Bangladesh by security forces. 

In the statement, they highlighted the involvement of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a paramilitary unit whose leaders have faced US sanctions for human rights abuses.

“Rather than engage the legitimate grievances of the protesters, the Bangladesh security forces, including the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), responded with brute force, killing hundreds of protesters, and arresting and injuring thousands more,” the senators said in the statement, published on the US senate website on Tuesday.

In recent weeks, thousands of students have taken to the streets in Bangladesh to protest a lack of economic opportunity and to end the government’s inequitable quota system for public sector employment that reserves government jobs for relatives of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence, read the statement.

Cardin and Booker emphasized the importance of the right to peacefully assemble and protest as fundamental to a democratic society. 

They called on Bangladeshi authorities to urgently conduct an independent and impartial investigation into the security services’ human rights violations.

The senators also urged the authorities to respect the rights of the protesters and address their grievances in good faith.

“The United States stands with these courageous individuals who are advocating for their dignity and for a prosperous future, and we will continue to speak up for human rights in Bangladesh and seek to hold accountable those involved in such abuses,” the statement added.