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 in opposition to its civilians to suppress the protest motion in July final yr, with the excessive commissioner calling for justice and critical 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 happened 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 carried out in September on the invitation of the interim authorities and its Chief Advisor, Dr. Muhammad Yunus.
The coed-led motion started as a protest in opposition to the nation’s excessive courtroom’s determination 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 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 critical human rights violations. These included a whole bunch of extrajudicial killings, use of drive on protestors, together with kids, and arbitrary detention and torture. OHCHR states that these human rights violations had been carried out with the complete data and on the path 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 had been instructed to take extra forceful measures, and the federal government ready to deploy paramilitary forces armed with army rifles.
The report confirmed the presence and use of metallic pellets, rubber bullets, and tear gasoline on protestors, who had been typically unarmed. Extreme drive was used in opposition to protestors by police and army 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 had been attributable to firearms. Bangladesh’s Ministry of Well being recorded over 13,000 accidents, a lot of that are long-term harm 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 had been additionally threatened with sexual violence to dissuade them from becoming a member of the protests. OHCHR references not less than two accounts of girls who had 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 circumstances might need occurred however had 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 had been bystanders and had 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, not less than 200 journalists had been injured and 6 had been confirmed lifeless. In the meantime, the previous authorities’s intelligence and telecommunications companies applied web and telecom shutdowns with out offering authorized justification. This was to stop the group of protests via 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 fast aftermath of Hasina’s departure, the violence didn’t finish. As an alternative, there have been reported circumstances of revenge violence focusing on the police, Awami League supporters, or these perceived to be supporting them. Studies additionally emerged of assaults on indigenous communities from the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the minority Hindu communities. Though 100 arrests relating to those assaults had 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 regulation. It’s emblematic of a deeper pattern in direction of using intimidation and even deadly drive to clamp down on civic and political exercise.
The report concludes with a collection of suggestions for sweeping reforms throughout the justice and safety sectors and to implement broader adjustments to the political system.
For the reason that 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 reworking Bangladesh into a rustic wherein all its folks can dwell in safety and dignity,” Yunus mentioned on Wednesday. Noting the report’s reference to structural points throughout the regulation enforcement sectors, Yunus referred to as on the folks in these sectors to “aspect with justice, the regulation, and the folks of Bangladesh in holding to account their very own friends and others who’ve damaged the regulation and violated the human and civil rights of their fellow residents.”
Türk expressed that his workplace could be able to assist Bangladesh within the means of nationwide accountability reform. “The easiest way ahead for Bangladesh is to face the horrific wrongs dedicated throughout this era via 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 have to be owed to the lives misplaced in the course of the protests. On the identical time, this authorities and the folks they signify 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 in opposition to the interim authorities and final yr’s protests.
Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, warns that the federal government “mustn’t repeat the errors of the previous” and as a substitute guarantee the right procedures for neutral rule of regulation. “Bangladeshis are indignant over the repression by the Hasina administration and so they deserve justice and accountability, but it surely must be in a rights-respecting method,” she mentioned. “All crimes, together with mob violence, must be punished, however when authority figures characterize opponents because the ‘satan,’ it will possibly gasoline abuses by safety forces which have by no means confronted accountability.”
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