The report published this month by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirms that Bangladesh is at a critical juncture. Bangladesh today is a place where revenge attacks, state-tolerated murder and judicial persecution are common. So too are threats to Hindus, minority Muslim groups ( Qadiany) and indigenous peoples, gender-based violence against women and girls, attacks on journalists and the suppression of free speech.
The OHCHR report is an urgent reminder to the international community that it needs to stay focused on Bangladesh, but it crucially falls short of holding the Interim Government accountable for the failures and deep-seated corruption that persist under the rule of its head, Dr Muhammad Yunus.
As such, Awami League wholly rejects the OHCHR report and the serious flaws in its investigative methodology and calls for a new and impartial inquiry. Bangladesh desperately needs an investigation that accounts for and properly documents the unrest that has run rampant up to and since August 15. This would include the organised killings and unlawful detentions of members and supporters of Awami League (the country’s biggest and oldest political party), the escalating attacks on religious and ethnic minorities, the suppression of media outlets and individual journalists, and the creeping radical Islamization of the country’s cultural and political life.
These concerning developments are reported daily in the international media but sadly receive little scrutiny in this month’s OHCHR document. A critical weakness of the report is that it does not cover the post-August 15 period, meaning that many of its observations fail to address the Bangladeshi people’s most urgent concerns. The OHCHR report itself acknowledges this flaw in its terms of reference. It also admits that it cannot supply levels of proof that would satisfy a criminal court that its allegations of Awami League involvement in human rights abuses are true. For the record, Awami League categorically denies and rejects the report’s claims that some of its senior leaders, including the Prime Minister herself, were personally responsible for or directed the use of lethal force against crowds; or were involved in or had knowledge of mistreatment of detainees.
These allegations rest entirely on biased evidence supplied by the Interim Government, while other records have been withheld that would exculpate the Awami League and incriminate members and supporters of the Interim Government. For example, the OHCHR flagrantly errs in accusing Awami League Government of failing to take steps to seek accountability for the breakdowns of discipline among some of those tasked with law-enforcement that led to regrettable deaths, violence and destruction from late July. In fact, in early August the Government publicly established an inquiry commission, later dissolved by Dr Yunus, to investigate those matters. Moreover, and at the same time, the UN itself was invited by the Awami League-led Government to observe events on the ground.
All incidents of violence and lawlessness – including many that were unreported at the time, all that have occurred since August 15, and all that continue to occur – must be investigated properly and impartially, whatever the political hue of their perpetrators.
The OHCHR exposes the impunity that many perpetrators of this violence continue to enjoy under the Interim Government, but an independent investigation must go further in holding it accountable for these blanket exclusions. Victims are currently deprived of their right to seek justice from their aggressors, or redress from the authorities that have failed to protect them against lawlessness. Those who have lost their lives or continue to endure violence and discrimination deserve better than this OHCHR report. Victims include the scores of policemen brutally murdered in undocumented lynchings, hangings, burnings and other revenge attacks during and after last year’s uprising. The OHCHR references just 44 such killings but suppressed documentary evidence shows there were many more. Bangladesh needs a fully independent review carried out by an impartial investigator without fear of reprisals.
The report makes important recommendations about the country’s need to foster and protect true multiparty democracy, to safeguard religious and ethnic minorities, and to secure the economic and social progress that Bangladesh has enjoyed in recent years. Yet none of this can happen while this incomplete narrative is allowed to persist unchallenged and while an unelected and partial administration remains in power, its failings glossed over by the OHCHR.
MOHAMMAD ARAFAT, SPOKESMAN FOR AWAMI LEAGUE SAID:
The world must not stand by as Bangladesh slides into decline and further civil strife. That is the clear message to be taken from the UN’s recent report.
Millions of people live in fear in Bangladesh right now. Their so-called crime is to be members of or supporters of the Awami League – a party that, unlike the current Interim Government, was democratically elected, and has its roots in the heroic movement that led to our country’s independence.
While the majority of law-enforcement officers acted within their guidelines, we don’t deny that mistakes were made in the way some members of the security forces responded to last year’s upsurge of violence. It was a fast-moving and febrile situation, and clearly there were breakdowns of discipline. But to characterize what happened as a plot by the country’s leaders to commit violence against their own people is entirely wrong.
In this matter, the UN’s inspectors have been spoon-fed nonsense by the Interim Government. Most of the so-called witnesses supplied to the UN were state employees who need to curry favour with Muhammad Yunus’s Interim Government to save their jobs. Many face misconduct charges themselves and are clearly passing the buck.
All of that said, it is also important to look forward. It is right that the OHCHR should call on the international community to help ensure that Bangladesh has free and fair elections as soon as possible, that its people can live in peace without fear of being victimized by the government and terrorized by mobs, and that its hard-won prosperity is not further damaged.
Dr Yunus has already failed all of these tests. It is time for him to admit that his administration is hopelessly partisan and compromised. He and his cronies need to stand down and hand back power to the President, so that Bangladeshi people can choose their own leaders again.”