THE findings of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights report on the student protests and consequent mass uprising in July–August 2024 that it was the prime minister Sheikh Hasina, deposed on August 5 that year, ordered security forces to kill protesters and hide their bodies point to heinous crimes. The report, released in Geneva on February 12, also holds security and intelligence services along with violent elements associated with the fallen Awami League and its government for their systematic engagement in a range of serious rights violation during the protests and uprising. The then home affairs minister, who presided over a meeting that the chiefs of the police, the Rapid Action Battalion and the Border Guard Bangladesh and intelligence agency leaders attended on July 18, 2024, asked the border guard commander to order the use of lethal force to quell the protests. Sheikh Hasina at a meeting the next day asked security force officials to kill the protesters, especially ‘ringleaders’ of the protests, and hide their bodies.
The report says that this corroborates what the Awami League’s general secretary on July 19 said, having ordered security forces to ‘shoot on sight’, which is manifestly incompatible with international rights standards. The ‘brutal response’ was a calculated, well-coordinated strategy of the Awami League to hold onto power. The report estimates 1,400 people to have been killed in July 1–August 15 and thousands wounded. Of them, 12–13 per cent were children and 44 were police officers. The use of military rifles was responsible for 66 per cent of the death, shotguns with pellets for 12 per cent, pistols for 2 per cent and other causes for 12 per cent. The report mentions former senior officials directly involved in handling the protests describe how Sheikh Hasina and other senior officials oversaw a series of large-scale operations in which security and intelligence units shot and killed protesters or arbitrarily arrested and tortured them. The UN investigation also finds an official policy to attack and violently repress protesters against government and their sympathisers which constitutes crimes against humanity that require further criminal investigation. All this shows that in addition to the abuses and crimes that the Awami League government made, law enforcement units were militarised. The UN report recommends disbanding the Rapid Action Battalion, confining the functions of border guards to border control issues and of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence to military intelligence and limiting their resources and legal powers.
The government must, therefore, expeditiously and credibly try the perpetrators of such crimes as only trial can make reparations. The government must also reform security and justice sectors, abolish repressive laws and dismantle institutions designed to stifle civic and political dissent.