THE Commission of Enquiry on Enforced Disappearances, which the interim government instituted on August 27, in an early report submitted on December 14 says that it has found prima facie involvement of Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister deposed on August 5 when the Awami League government was toppled in a mass uprising, and ranking officials of security and law enforcement agencies and the government of the day in involuntary disappearances. The people that the commission has found involved in the incidents include a former National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre director general, a former Special Branch chief and a former Detective Branch chief. The agencies found involved in involuntary disappearances also include the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, the Rapid Action Battalion, the police and its branches such as the Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit and Criminal Investigation Department. A member on the commission, which estimates the number of enforced disappearances to have exceeded 3,500, says that witness statements suggest the involvement of Sheikh Hasina in involuntary disappearances. The report, Unfolding the Truth, that the commission has submitted recommends that the Rapid Action Battalion, the elite force that was pulled together with police, army and air force personnel and border guards to improve law and order, should be disbanded.
The police unit, on which the US Treasury department imposed sanctions on December 10, 2021, for its involvement in rights abuse, on December 15, however, offered a public apology for the misdeeds it had perpetrated since its inception until now. A commission member says that the battalion needs to be held to account for its misdeeds. The proposition appears pertinent, also for other agencies that have committed crimes and abused rights. The director general of the force, when he offered the apology at a press conference on December 12, has also said that only holding the perpetrators in the agency to justice through credible investigation of the allegations could redeem the force as an institution. The commission, which will submit another interim report in March, says that it has recorded 1,676 complaints of enforced disappearances and already examined 758 complaints, in which cases 73 per cent of the victims have later reappeared and 27 per cent of the victims are still missing. The commission is said to be needing one more year from March to complete the scrutiny of all the complaints it has so far received. The commission says that it has found a 鈥榮ystematic鈥� design to hide the incidents of enforced disappearances in that the agencies involved in the crimes exchanged victims and the operations were kept deliberately segmented.
The more the commission works, the more issues might come up. But it needs to investigate the incidents credibly so that the investigation and the trial that would follow do not fall into controversy. It is extremely important that the process remains above any bias and strictly upholds the rule of law to avoid controversy.
