Bangladesh has urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take Israeli atrocities in Gaza into cognizance and bring the offenders to justice.
Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali on Sunday said the Hague-based international tribunal should uphold its mandates to address the issue and expressed Bangladesh’s readiness to extend “all possible support”.
“It would be an affront to call this only as an Arab-Israel conflict. It is something far beyond,” he said. “The humanitarian tragedy that we witness in the Gaza Strip relates to the issues of humanity, morality, law, and war ethics”.
Bangladesh is a party to the Rome Statute that gave birth to the criminal court mandated to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
Palestine ambassador in Dhaka Shaher Mohammad was also present among others.
Israeli attacks have killed about 2,000 Palestinians and devastated wide tracts of densely populated Gaza.
The UN has formed an international commission of inquiry into possible human rights violations and war crimes committed by both sides during Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Bangladesh has been vocal against Israeli brutalities from the beginning.
Dhaka strongly condemned the Israeli aggression and called upon the members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to impose sanctions on Israel to send “a strong message” against its aggression in Gaza.
The cabinet meeting has brought two resolutions condemning the attack while the government is preparing to send medical team in Gaza.
The foreign minister said Bangladesh regretted that repeated appeals of the international community towards ceasefire and minimum level of humanitarian approach to the Palestinian people remained unheeded.
“We call upon the international community, including conscientious citizens of the world to exert their collective pressure on Israel to refrain from its atrocities, human rights violation, and indiscriminate killing of civilians including women, children and the elderly, on a sustainable basis”.
He lamented “the absence of sufficient response and reaction” from the world powers to timely and effectively address this issue, including through the UN Security Council.
“We have pledged through the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to pursue the issue through the UN General Assembly under an Algerian initiative in the face of the UN Security Council’s inability to take a decisive action in this regard,” he said.
Source: bdnews24
