Overview

Extrajudicial execution, enforced disappearance and torture – these are the tools used by death squads across South Asia. Across the region, human rights abuses are perpetrated behind the closed doors by the 'jallad', or hangmen, of secret detention facilities, while death squads roam the streets with impunity. By using first-hand experience and newly discovered sources, Tasneem Khalil connects these abuses to a disturbing fact - that Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are national security states connected to an international system of state terror, patronised by sponsors like the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Israel. Looking at infamous 'enforcers' such as The Rapid Action Battalion of Bangladesh, the 'encounter specialists' of India, army units of Nepal, the Frontier Corps of Pakistan and 'the men in white vans' of Sri Lanka, Khalil reveals a huge system of specialists in violence deployed by the state in campaigns of state terror, a bloody logic of domination and repression that lies at the very core of statecraft in South Asia.

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Reviews

'A powerful and frightening document that traces how political independence mutated into a celebration of the growing power of the military' -- Jeremy Seabrook, writer and researcher; author of 'The Refuge and the Fortress: Britain and the Flight from Tyranny'. 'An important message to states to ensure accountability and respect human rights' -- Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director, Human Rights Watch

'The issues addressed in Jallad have been systematically neglected in Europe and the US, as well as in South Asia.' -- Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror (Verso, 2014).

Author Information

Tasneem Khalil is an exiled Bangladeshi journalist who previously worked for The Daily Star, CNN, Human Rights Watch and has written for the International Herald Tribune, NPR, Guardian, Washington Post and BBC and is the author of Jallad: Death Squads and State Terror in South Asia (Pluto, 2015). He was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International in 2007, following his detention by the Bangladeshi military intelligence agency. In 2008, Swedish PEN conferred him with an honorary membership for his journalism.

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