DHAKA: A commission entrusted with looking into enforced disappearances revealed Tuesday that some 200 Bangladeshis who were kidnapped by security personnel following the overthrow of former premier Sheikh Hasina are still unaccounted for.
Hasina’s iron-fisted rule came to a spectacular end in August when a student-led movement flooded the streets of the capital Dhaka, forcing the 77-year-old to flee by helicopter to neighboring India.
Numerous human rights violations were alleged against her government, including the extrajudicial execution of hundreds of political opponents and the wrongful kidnapping and disappearance of hundreds more.
Five persons have been freed from covert prison facilities following Hasina’s overthrow, according to a committee of investigation established by the interim administration currently in power, but many more were still missing. There are at least 200 persons missing. Noor Khan, a member of the commission, stated, “We have been trying to find them.”
At least eight covert prison facilities, some with cells as small as three by four feet, were found in Dhaka and its surrounding areas, according to the panel. According to the report, there were engravings on the walls of these rooms that seemed to indicate the inmates had kept track of how many days they had been held.
Since Hasina’s removal, just five individuals have been released from covert detention facilities.
Following Hasina’s fall, one commissioner said that anonymous law enforcement organizations had attempted to remove any trace of these covert incarceration facilities. Commissioners stated that the elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) police unit was held accountable for the majority of disappearance instances that were brought to their attention.
Following allegations that the RAB was responsible for some of the greatest human rights violations under Hasina’s leadership, Washington sanctioned the organization and seven of its top officials in 2021.
Institutional failures in the administration and courts, according to commission chair Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury, have also contributed to Hasina’s climate of impunity. He claimed that they had exploited the law enforcement agency for their personal political and agenda purposes rather than in the public good.
The panel was set up by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus’s interim administration in an attempt to carry out extensive democratic changes. In order to avoid a potential return to authoritarianism, Yunus has stated that he inherited a “completely broken down” structure of public administration that required a thorough renovation.
Reports of arbitrary arrests and kidnappings surfaced during Hasina’s rule. According to EFE news, a Bangladeshi student leader told a group of journalists about his terrifying experience being kidnapped, tortured, and left comatose on a street in Dhaka by individuals posing as police earlier in July.
According to France 24 news, rights organizations claim that over 600 people have been the victims of “enforced disappearances” during Hasina’s 15-year autocratic leadership, including journalists, lawyers, and political opponents. Families still hold out hope for the return of their “loved ones” who were kidnapped during Hasina’s rule.
