Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
“ARREST THE RINGLEADERS of the protests, the troublemakers, kill them and hide their bodies.” This was the order Sheikh Hasina gave to security forces at the height of the protests that rocked Bangladesh last summer, according to the just-published report of a United Nations fact-finding mission.
Coming from the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the report anchors the widely-accepted narrative of Hasina’s fall: that she brutalised her own people right up to the end, after 15 years of unrestrained state capture. It will therefore make for difficult reading in New Delhi, which stood by Hasina throughout, and in the hiding places around the world of her exiled supporters. But the report also offers a sobering corrective to Bangladesh’s interim government, led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. It paints an unflattering picture not just of the Hasina government’s brutality but also of the interim government’s failure to stop abusive practices that continue to this day.
The UN report has made waves in Bangladesh, where the interim government has welcomed its corroboration of what happened in July and August 2024. Containing damning evidence of the Hasina government’s complicity in atrocities on a massive scale, it will make it much harder for the former prime minister’s party, the Awami League, to make a comeback in Bangladesh any time soon. It will also make it difficult for her backers in New Delhi to continue their implicit support for the ousted government. Although the Indian government is currently providing asylum – unlawfully – to Hasina and a number of her ministers, the report makes it clear New Delhi backed the wrong side. It might even nudge India to rethink its Bangladesh strategy at last, amid mounting tensions between the two countries. In a sign of Hasina’s lasting potency as a subject of hatred, just last week a mob in Dhaka demolished a museum dedicated to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, her father and the founding president of Bangladesh. This came after Hasina made an incendiary broadcast from her new home in Delhi.
The UN fact-finding mission interviewed over 200 participants in the protests, belonging to both the old regime and the new one. It was also granted full access to almost all the centres of power in the country – except the army and its intelligence network, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI). Consequently, the report has yielded some significant findings, which are relevant to post-uprising Bangladesh too.
Chiefly, it suggests that Hasina, her subordinates and security officials bore direct responsibility for killing “as many as 1400” largely peaceful protesters, arresting thousands more without justification or due process, and turning off the internet in a country of 180 million people, at a possible cost to the economy of USD 10 billion. The report also offers a shocking indictment of the 15 years of Awami League rule that preceded Hasina’s fall. It shows how the country had become a police state, in which sophisticated technology was used to suppress dissent; how state institutions were thoroughly captured; and how the streets became subject to the violent rule of political goons – notably, the Awami League’s youth wing, the Chhatra League.
The report details at length how the Chhatra League, led by the student activist named Saddam Hussain, attacked student protesters during the uprising and utilised sexual violence against women, all with police cover. It also provides granular detail of several incidents in which peaceful protesters were killed or arbitrarily detained, both before and after the Awami League secretary-general Obaidul Quader issued “shoot on sight” orders on 19 July. The report does not offer an exhaustive survey, but it paints a compelling picture of intentional, targeted murders of protesters by security forces, acting under orders from senior ministers and security officials.
Mostly, the killing was done by the police, alongside the Border Guard Bangladesh and the Rapid Action Battalion paramilitary units, which are staffed by army officers but report directly to the home minister. However, the UN report has also pointed the finger at the army, which has otherwise enjoyed a reputation as one of the heroes of what has been called the Monsoon Revolution.
The Bangladesh Army is one of the country’s strongest institutions, and enjoyed a certain amount of independence even under the Hasina dictatorship. At a public meeting on 3 August, junior officers told the army chief, General Waker-uz-Zaman, that they felt uncomfortable firing on civilians. Nevertheless, the next day he agreed to Hasina’s order to stop the protesters’ “March on Dhaka” by force. However, on 5 August, he failed to carry out this order. Instead, he encouraged the prime minister to leave the country for her own safety and allowed an interim government to be set up, although reports suggest there was considerable wrangling over who would lead it.
The general view is that the army played a neutral, even commendable role. However, the UN report has introduced a measure of doubt into that picture. It has uncovered evidence that, contrary to popular belief, the army did fire on protesters in a few instances, and “played an important enabling role for serious violations by police and paramilitary forces”, including by providing cover.
And the report squarely blames the country’s military intelligence agency, the DGFI, for a host of abuses. These include abduction, arbitrary detention, intimidation of victims and journalists, obstruction of medical care, and widespread surveillance that would have informed targeted detentions. Since the DGFI is staffed by army officers, who are transferred back and forth from the army, it is hard to disentangle the two organisations. Neither the leaders of the army nor of the DGFI cooperated with the fact-finding mission, and neither organisation has faced any serious accountability since August. If anything, the army’s prestige has grown as it has been given magistracy powers to help stabilise a still volatile law-and-order situation. Together with the DGFI, its continuing role is a key unknown variable in determining the course of post-uprising Bangladesh.
THESE FINDINGS OFFER the broad outlines of a case that would, in most courts, see Hasina and her lieutenants – alongside individual perpetrators in Bangladesh’s security forces – convicted of crimes against humanity. Although the report notes that “OHCHR established the underlying facts on a reasonable grounds basis, which is a lower standard of proof than what would be required to ensure a criminal conviction in a court of law”, it states that further investigations are warranted. That begs the question of whether such investigations are being conducted and how.
Bangladesh’s interim government has made it a core priority to investigate the crimes of the uprising. This reflects its oft-stated commitment to reform. Unfortunately, its efforts at accountability have been, at best, uneven. The UN report cites the risk that, in its haste to put members of the old regime on trial, the interim government risks “replicating poor practices of the past.”
For a start, it has used the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) of Bangladesh to prosecute the more high-profile perpetrators. This tribunal was used by Hasina to prosecute war-crimes dating from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, but it came to be marred by egregious violations as her political opponents were sent to the gallows without due process. Although the interim government has amended the procedures of the ICT, the report notes that “concerns… remain.” The tribunal retains the use of the death penalty, follows evidence rules that fall below international standards, and seems bent on holding trials in absentia. Moreover, the ICT lacks the necessary resources for such complex cases, and prosecutors are under intense pressure to speed up the trial process, especially as members of the government keep making public statements about when the trials will be completed. This is not exactly a recipe for credible, internationally recognised transitional justice.
And there are concerns about who will be subject to this justice. Members of the army and intelligence agencies will not be, with the notable exception of Major General Ziaul Ahsan – a particularly high-profile perpetrator. Nor will those who engaged in revenge violence after Hasina fell. The report details several incidents of such revenge attacks after 5 August, including one case where “the bloodied bodies of slain police officers were strung up in public places.”
The interim government has undertaken to clamp down on such violence, but its efforts so far have been inadequate, as “many perpetrators of revenge violence and abuses against distinct religious and indigenous groups apparently continue to enjoy impunity.” Worse still, it has declared a general amnesty for protesters – including, presumably, those who lynched policemen in the moment of the protest movement’s victory. In October, the government issued a notice that protesters who “put forth all efforts to make this uprising successful will not face prosecution, arrest, or harassment for their acts between July 15 and August 8.” Although this was probably intended as an acknowledgement of the general righteousness of their cause, it spells nothing good for the integrity of transitional justice in the “new” Bangladesh.
But elsewhere that justice has cast a wide net, ensnaring some who will be put on trial for crimes they have little or no relation to. For example, prominent political figures widely suspected of corruption are charged with murdering protesters. Some of these men are widely suspected of corruption, and yet they have been charged not with corruption but with murder. Others have been arrested and charged without the perception of any obvious criminality, leaving open the suggestion that they are to be punished for crimes of association or ideology.
As the report puts it, the mass filing of cases “leads to large numbers of people being investigated or even arrested despite having no legally relevant connection to crimes, while scarce investigative, prosecutorial and judicial capacities risk being diverted away from preparing strong indictments against persons with clear legal responsibility for alleged crimes.” The government has argued that it is not responsible for members of the public filing cases on spurious grounds, but that is not wholly true. It has had more than six months to put a stop to the practice; it has not only not done so, but has also colluded in this form of legalistic mob justice by allowing the police to arrest journalists, activists and retired politicians without justification.
These failings come through even more clearly in a recent report by the international watchdog Human Rights Watch. Titled “After the Monsoon Revolution” and released in late January, this report too has been warmly received in Bangladesh as it corroborates the factual basis of Hasina’s brutal repression, the spontaneous popular struggle, and the ultimate formation of a well-intentioned interim government. However, like the UN report, it has received less attention for what it has to say about “persistingabuses”. The report has cited the victimisation of journalists deemed “pro-Awami League”, the unrestrained practice of arbitrary arrests and the fear felt by minorities due to violence. Although the Human Rights Watch report is unclear as to what part of this is the fault of the interim government and what part is the result of general chaos, it is clear about the impact of “powerful and politicized security forces that have long benefited from a system of impunity.”
The two reports highlight the historic achievement of the interim government, constituted in a moment of triumph for popular sovereignty. But they also warn that this achievement might be spoiled by a failure to get to grips with the administration of justice, the impunity accorded to security forces and the prevalence of mob violence. The reports give the impression of the interim government as a semi-revolutionary regime contending with circumstances outside of its control. They make the crucial recommendation that Bangladesh should seek international assistance – possibly in the form of human rights monitoring by the UN – to ensure that it lives up to the Monsoon Revolution’s promise of an equitable, inclusive and democratic Bangladesh.△
Cyrus Naji
Click here to subscribe to ESSF newsletters in English and or French.
Twitter
Facebook