UN Probe Accuses Hasina Regime of Crimes Against Humanity

 

Street Grafitti by students of Monsoon Revolution. Photo Copyright @OHCHR

SALEEM SAMAD

Weeks before former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India, who is now living in exile somewhere in Delhi, the country erupted in anti-government street protests that turned violent last year. Now the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) in a damning report points fingers at the crackdown by security forces and it is said to have committed human rights violations with impunity.

The brutal July-August crackdown by the Hasina regime was tantamount to crimes against humanity as stated by the former ruling party, Awami League, the security and intelligence agencies together systematically engaged in such violations against protesters of Monsoon Revolution, which ousted the 15-year-old autocratic rule of Hasina.

“To cling on to power, the former Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government with all its political apparatus – including security and intelligence forces – used systematic and brutal violence against student-led mass protests in July-August last year,”. The UN Human Rights Office report is based on credible testimonies from senior officials and other evidence such as serious human rights violations by security forces during the protests, including extrajudicial killings, excessive use of force causing serious injuries to thousands, mass arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture and other mistreatments.

The testimonies and evidence gathered by the UN fact-finding mission painted a disturbing picture of rampant state violence and targeted killings, which are among the most serious violations of human rights, and which may also constitute international crimes.

Sources have verified the deaths reported, the UN report estimates that 1,400 people, around 12 per cent of those were children, may have been killed between 1 July and 15 August (45 days) last year, and over 13,500 were injured, the vast majority of whom were shot by Bangladesh’s security forces. Bangladesh Police also reported that 44 of its members were killed.

The fact-finding report found evidence to prove that Hasina oversaw the July protest killings!!! The report also states that former senior officials directly involved in handling the protests and other inside sources described how Hasina and other senior officials directed and oversaw a countrywide large-scale crackdown from a command center, in which security and intelligence forces shot and killed protesters or arbitrarily arrested and tortured them.

The fugitive home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal deployed the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) as a strike force and even specifically demanded the deployment of more helicopters to scare protesters in the way that the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) had used them, the report elaborated.

“The testimonies and evidence we gathered paint a disturbing picture of rampant state violence and targeted killings, which are amongst the most serious violations of human rights, and which may also constitute international crimes. Accountability and justice are essential for national healing and for the future of Bangladesh,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk at a press conference in Geneva on 12th February.

“The brutal response was a calculated and well-coordinated strategy by the former government to hold onto power in the face of mass opposition,” said Türk. At the request of Chief Adviser Prof Mohammed Yunus, the UN Human Rights Office dispatched a team to Bangladesh in September, including human rights investigators, a forensics physician, and a weapons expert, to conduct an independent and impartial fact-finding into the deadly events.

These violations raise concerns under international criminal law, warranting further investigations to determine whether they amount to crimes against humanity, torture as a stand-alone crime, or serious violations under domestic law, according to the report. It found patterns of security forces deliberately and impermissibly killing or maiming protesters, including incidents where people were shot at a close range.

Violations during the protests included evidence of violence incitement by armed Awami League supporters, excessive use of force by Police, RAB, and BGB — resulting in extrajudicial killings — along the Army’s involvement in the use of excessive force.

The report also documents cases in which security forces denied or obstructed critical medical care for injured protesters, interrogated patients and collected their fingerprints in hospitals, intimidated medical personnel, and seized hospital CCTV footage without due process, in an apparent effort to identify protesters and to conceal evidence of the extent of violence carried out by state forces.

The RAB should be disbanded, and the roles of the BGB and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), a military spy agency, must be confined to their original mandates. It has been advised that independent commissions must be created to investigate police violations and establish similar accountability and justice mechanisms for the Bangladesh Armed Forces and BGB.

The UN report recommends reforming the security and justice sectors, abolishing a host of repressive laws and institutions designed to stifle civic and political dissent and implement broader changes to the political system and economic governance.

The most crucial observation of the UN probe report strongly recommended that the Bangladesh authorities should refrain from nominating military or police personnel for peacekeeping missions who have served with the RAB, DGFI, or Dhaka Metropolitan Police Detective Branch, or in BGB battalions deployed to the 2024 protests or other force-suppressed protests until a human rights screening mechanism is established.

The report did not hesitate to document the aftermath of the protests, and the report also found police officers being revengefully targeted, Awami League members, and the police were perceived to be aligned with the Awami League, as well as some journalists presumed to be affiliated with Hasina’s regime.

Former Ambassador Humayun Kabir, chairman of Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, an influential think-tank when approached to comment on what is going to happen next, said now it is clear that Hasina is likely not to be tried in Bangladesh.

The UN fact-finding report is an authenticated investigative document which would be produced at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, The Netherlands.

The ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan after at a parley with Nobel laureate Prof Yunus has agreed to investigate and start a due process for the trial of Hasina for crimes against humanity. Once the ICC agrees to put Hasina on the docks to face crimes she has committed, The Hague court will seek her extradition from India, where she has been living in exile since 5 August.

It will surely be a severe diplomatic embarrassment for the bigwigs at New Delhi’s South Block where they do not have enough legal reasons to scuttle her extradition to The Hague.

On the other hand, despite a formal request by Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry through diplomatic channels, Delhi has remained silent, except for the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs who has acknowledged receiving the ‘note verbale’ from Dhaka of her extradition.

Well, regarding the deportation of Hasina to Bangladesh, India has several arguments for not sending her to stand trial at the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka. But giving excuses to the ICC will be difficult for India.

First published in the Stratheia, a Policy Journal, Islamabad, Pakistan on 16 February 2025

Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangladesh. A media rights defender with the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter). Recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad

Growing Pressure on Dr. Yunus for Early Elections

SALEEM SAMAD

When Sheikh Hasina came to power, the new generation (Gen Z) had not seen free, fair, and inclusive elections since 2008. Election observers described the parliament elections under her 15-year autocratic regime as fraud, and the poll results were cropped.

The international media had widely reported how elections in Bangladesh in 2014, 2018, and 2024 were held under the cover of darkness, keeping thousands of opposition leaders and members in prison.

The rights organizations repeatedly made loud noise, but Hasina ignored their calls to hold free and fair elections. Instead, she was beating African drums that the country belongs to her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was ordained as the architect of Bangladesh’s independence signalling she has the right the govern with an iron hand.

Amid cheering crowds, she often boasted that her father had made the country independent and was known as Bangabandhu (Friend of Bangladesh). Otherwise, she explained, the nation would have been subjugated by Pakistan’s military establishment, making them second-class citizens.

Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus took charge of an Interim Government backed by defiant student leaders and the military after they forced the Iron Lady (Hasina) to abdicate her power and flee to India, where she is living in exile.

The political parties except the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami have demanded an election at the soonest, indicating before the end of this year. Yunus charted a path to reforms to establish pluralism, democracy, and human rights, he announced in an address to the nation that several commissions suggested reforms to key state organs.

He conveyed to the political leaders that the elections would be held only after the reforms on Electoral System, Constitution, Public Administration, Judiciary, Financial Institutions, Media, Police Administration, and Anti-Corruption were made effective. The political parties and civil society welcomed his initiative.

When military dictator General Muhammad Ershad was ousted by students backed by the military in 1990, the mainstream opposition parties signed an election pledge prepared by the student leaders. The opposition leaders promised to implement the reforms in key state organs.

Sheikh Hasina, Khaleda Zia, and the Left Alliance jointly signed a tripartite political commitment that they will implement the reforms after winning the elections. Unfortunately, both the Begums went to power again and again but they deliberately avoided implementing the pro-people pledge.

After decades of bad governance, poor accountability and transparency, Yunus is determined to see a new Bangladesh, which adheres to the principles of international covenants to put the country at a respectable height on the world stage.

The reforms are supposed to guarantee democracy, pluralism, accountability, transparency, independence of the judiciary, independent election commission, freedom of expression, press freedom, and human rights. He has reiterated that the elections will be held once the reforms have taken off the ground zero.

Most political scientists and think tanks believe that the political parties would agree not to disagree. Later the politicians, when elected, the painstakingly homework for reforms would be binned. For more than five decades the political parties that ruled the nation were intolerant and arrogant. At times reacted very violently.

The politicians publicly flouted the rule of law, punished the journalists for exposing their corruption, and ignored the accountability of elected representatives of public offices. They often coerced police and judiciary to ensure that their blue-eyed boys were kept out of prison for extortion from traders and protection money from industrialists, while their rivals were severely punished and blocked from politics.

The visible challenges in front of Yunus are acting as a stumbling block in the accountability of bureaucracy, judiciary and law and order situation. The police are unable to restore lawlessness and control price hikes in kitchen markets.

There is no guarantee clause to be signed by politicians, that the reforms should be taken into cognizance in “good faith” by the ‘untamed’ political parties. Yunus told in an interview with an editor of a Bangladesh newspaper that the leaders of the political parties when they held parleys with him were polite and humble.

However, when they spoke to the journalists, they gave a different statement which they did not put on the table of discussion with the Chief Adviser of the Interim Government. It is strange but it is a fact, he told the editor.

The recent spree of vandalism and demolition of the Bangabandhu Museum, the former residence of the first President of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on 5 February. Students went berserk in several cities and towns in the looting and arson of Awami League senior leaders, who were deemed icons of accomplices to autocratic Hasina’s misrule.

The Chief Adviser in a tone of warning that certain groups are pushing the nation into anarchy and lawlessness. The inventor of micro-credit Prof Yunus calls on all citizens “to immediately restore complete law and order and to ensure there will be no further attacks on properties” associated with the family of the ousted Sheikh Hasina and politicians of the fascist Awami League party or against any citizen on any pretext.

He, however, said the outrage has sparked from her (Hasina) refuge in New Delhi, and from there she continues to mobilize her militants to hamper Bangladesh’s recovery from years of abuse under her 15-year rule.

If any attempt is made to destabilize the country through any kind of provocative activities, law enforcement agencies will immediately take strict action against anyone acting to create chaos and anarchy, which includes the destruction of property. The government will bring the responsible individuals and groups to justice, he stated.

While the vandalism and looting, the law enforcement agencies were playing as silent spectators when the mobs were rioting. Several civil society, rights, and citizens groups strongly condemned the vandalism, arson, and looting of family members of Hasina and Awami League leaders.

Celebrated feminist Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who lives in exile in India, has called the demolition of Sheikh Mujib’s residence an act of “Islamic terrorists”.

The Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Dr Shafiqur Rahman said “If the ongoing madness does not stop, Bangladesh will be heading towards civil war.” While, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said in a statement that they will hold talks with Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus as soon as possible to express their concern over the country’s “deteriorating” law and order situation, especially the demolition of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s residence in Dhaka.

They fear that these attacks and vandalism in the last two days could pose a serious threat to national stability and disrupt the upcoming national election, a BNP statement said. It is understood that on the issue of appalling law and order status, the political parties will press Yunus to hold elections in the coming winter.

Most political analysts argue that Yunus may not agree to their demand for an early election, unless the reforms get tacit approval from all political parties, except for the former ruling party Awami League. Most of the like-minded political parties, except the Islamist parties, are lisping the same jargon as the BNP’s political agenda of early election.

Will an election roadmap neutralize the political crisis? Writer and researcher on political history Mohiuddin Ahmad does not believe that the situation will improve; rather, it may worsen.

Most political parties have extended their support to the Interim Government led by Prof Yunus. However, they argue that in the last six months, the government has failed in various areas, including controlling the price of daily essentials and improving the law and order situation.

As a result, there are doubts about their ability to control any situation in the country. The last two days of vandalism have added to the crisis of confidence. Ahmad remarked that if the government announces an election roadmap, there will be a further crisis when local party leaders clash with rivals in electioneering.

The government and mainstream political parties should focus on the country’s image and stability. Because if there is no stability, everything including democracy and elections will suffer, said political scientist Professor Mahbub Ullah to BBC Bangla Service.

First published in the Stratheia, Policy Journal, Islamabad, Pakistan, 9 February 2025

Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangladesh. A media rights defender with the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter). Recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad