THE horror of the secret detention centres that law enforcement and security forces ran and kept victims of enforced disappearances for months and years during the Awami League regime, toppled in a mass uprising on August 5, 2024, was evident even after modifications were made to the centres. While media reports and the report of the commission of inquiry on enforced disappearances, which the interim government formed on August 8, made the horror of the secret detention centres, also known as Aynaghar, public, people in at home and abroad could see the centres on February 12 when the chief adviser, a number of other advisers, the commission of inquiry members, enforced disappearances victims and local and international media visited a few centres at Agargaon, Kachukhet and Uttara in Dhaka. One cannot but be horrified by the visuals of the detention centres, most of which are no larger than a grave, by the few still existing words and prayers written on the walls by the victims, the tools used for torturing the victims and the victims鈥� harrowing tale of torture and ill-treatment.
The detention centres, where victims of enforced disappearances, mostly members of political opponents, were kept and tortured and many of whom have never returned, testify to the heinous crimes that the Awami League regime committed. More than 600 cases of enforced disappearances have been reported since the Awami League government assumed office in 2009. In some cases, the people who disappeared were later found dead. In other cases, they returned but kept silent about what happened. The whereabouts of some are yet to be known. The families of the enforced disappearance victims even found it difficult to lodge complaints as the police, who control the complaint mechanism, often outright refused to register complaints about enforced disappearances while the Awami League government denied the existence of the secret detention centres and ignored calls of local and international rights organisations for independent and impartial investigation of the incidents of enforced disappearances. The detention centres are a scar, an affront to justice and a blatant abuse of law enforcement and intelligence units. The centres have tainted Bangladesh鈥檚 image as much as the image of law enforcement and intelligence units.
The country must ensure that heinous crimes like enforced disappearances do not happen again and that agencies are never politicised and they never engage in criminal, illegal, or extra-legal deeds. The government must bring all parties, including errant members of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, responsible to justice and make the required reforms to the operation of law enforcement and intelligence units.
