UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 (IPS) – A brand new report from the UN Human Rights Workplace confirms that Bangladesh’s former authorities coordinated and dedicated human rights violations towards its civilians to suppress the protest motion in July final yr, with the excessive commissioner calling for justice and severe reform to finish the cycle of violence and retribution.
On 12 February, the UN Workplace of the Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) launched a long-awaited report on the human rights violations and abuses that occurred throughout and following the anti-government protests in Bangladesh from 1 July to fifteen August, 2024. This report is the result of a fact-finding mission performed in September on the invitation of the interim authorities and its Chief Advisor, Dr. Muhammad Yunus.
The scholar-led motion started as a protest towards the nation’s excessive court docket’s choice to reinstate an unpopular quota system for civil service jobs. The motion unfold throughout the nation and garnered nationwide consideration when senior officers of the Awami League, the previous ruling get together, decried the scholars’ requests. As the scholars confronted escalating retaliation from the Awami League and safety forces, protestors shifted their calls for in the direction of wider authorities reform and the resignation of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. She fled to India on August 5, 2024, marking an finish to her regime.
The report discovered that Hasina’s authorities and the safety and intelligence groups systematically engaged in severe human rights violations. These included tons of of extrajudicial killings, use of pressure on protestors, together with kids, and arbitrary detention and torture. OHCHR states that these human rights violations have been performed with the complete information and on the course of the political leaders and safety personnel, with the intent to suppress the protests.
“The brutal response was a calculated and well-coordinated technique by the previous authorities to carry onto energy within the face of mass opposition,” mentioned UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk.
The OHCHR investigation discovered that senior Awami League officers mobilized their supporters and the Chhtra League, the get together’s scholar wing, to hold out armed assaults on scholar protestors to dissuade dissent. When the protestors held their floor, police forces have been instructed to take extra forceful measures, and the federal government ready to deploy paramilitary forces armed with navy rifles.
The report confirmed the presence and use of steel pellets, rubber bullets, and tear fuel on protestors, who have been usually unarmed. Extreme pressure was used towards protestors by police and navy personnel, notably the Fast Motion Battalion (RAB), a paramilitary group which were criticized by human rights teams for his or her extreme use of violence and intimidation. An examination from Dhaka Medical Faculty of 130 deaths from that interval revealed that 80 p.c have been attributable to firearms. Bangladesh’s Ministry of Well being recorded over 13,000 accidents, a lot of that are long-term injury to the eyes and torso.
Girls that participated within the protests confronted verbal abuse and bodily assaults from the police and Awami League supporters. Feminine college students have been additionally threatened with sexual violence to dissuade them from becoming a member of the protests. OHCHR references at the very least two accounts of ladies who have been bodily assaulted and groped by Chhatra League members earlier than being turned over to the police. They comment within the report that it was potential that many extra such instances might need occurred however have been unreported.
OHCHR estimates that as many as 1,400 deaths occurred referring to the protests, with kids accounting for roughly 12 p.c of these deaths. These deaths occurred amongst underage college students who participated within the protests or kids who have been bystanders and have been fatally shot by stray bullets.
The report additionally notes the state’s efforts to suppress info and conceal the extent of the unrest. Journalists confronted intimidation from safety forces; by the top of the protests, at the very least 200 journalists have been injured and 6 have been confirmed useless. In the meantime, the previous authorities’s intelligence and telecommunications businesses carried out web and telecom shutdowns with out offering authorized justification. This was to forestall the group of protests by way of social media and prevented journalists, activists and most people from sharing or accessing details about the protests and the federal government’s retaliation.
Within the speedy aftermath of Hasina’s departure, the violence didn’t finish. As a substitute, there have been reported instances of revenge violence focusing on the police, Awami League supporters, or these perceived to be supporting them. Stories additionally emerged of assaults on indigenous communities from the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the minority Hindu communities. Though 100 arrests relating to those assaults have been reportedly made, lots of the perpetrators nonetheless confronted impunity.
OHCHR remarks that the previous authorities’s crackdown on the protest motion constituted violations of worldwide legislation. It’s emblematic of a deeper pattern in the direction of using intimidation and even deadly pressure to clamp down on civic and political exercise.
The report concludes with a sequence of suggestions for sweeping reforms throughout the justice and safety sectors and to implement broader adjustments to the political system.
Because the report’s launch, the interim authorities has indicated they welcome its findings and can take steps to implement the suggestions. “I, together with everybody else working within the interim authorities and thousands and thousands of different Bangladeshis, am dedicated to remodeling Bangladesh into a rustic wherein all its folks can stay in safety and dignity,” Yunus mentioned on Wednesday. Noting the report’s reference to structural points throughout the legislation enforcement sectors, Yunus known as on the folks in these sectors to “facet with justice, the legislation, and the folks of Bangladesh in holding to account their very own friends and others who’ve damaged the legislation and violated the human and civil rights of their fellow residents.”
Türk expressed that his workplace could be able to help Bangladesh within the means of nationwide accountability reform. “One of the simplest ways ahead for Bangladesh is to face the horrific wrongs dedicated throughout this era by way of a complete means of truth-telling, therapeutic and accountability and to redress the legacy of great human rights violations and guarantee they’ll by no means occur once more.”
The interim authorities’s acknowledgement of the human rights report is to be welcomed. Prior to now, it was widespread for earlier governments to dismiss any such reviews. Therapeutic and retribution should be owed to the lives misplaced in the course of the protests. On the similar time, this authorities and the folks they characterize should additionally acknowledge that of their efforts to hunt justice and accountability, they need to not fall into the entice of mob violence or a complete otherizing of former leaders, even because the ousted regime carries out a marketing campaign towards the interim authorities and final yr’s protests.
Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, warns that the federal government “shouldn’t repeat the errors of the previous” and as an alternative guarantee the correct procedures for neutral rule of legislation. “Bangladeshis are offended over the repression by the Hasina administration and so they deserve justice and accountability, however it must be in a rights-respecting method,” she mentioned. “All crimes, together with mob violence, ought to be punished, however when authority figures characterize opponents because the ‘satan,’ it will probably gas abuses by safety forces which have by no means confronted accountability.”
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