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The United Nations Human Rights Office in a fact-finding report has stated that it did not find any genuine efforts by the Sheikh Hasina government to investigate any of the serious violations and abuses committed by the state’s security forces and the Awami League supporters during the July-August protests.

The fact-finding report on rights abuses during the July-August protests further said that the authorities at the time rather sought to conceal violations by the security forces through falsely accusing others.

‘Between 1 July and 5 August 2024, OHCHR was unable to ascertain any genuine efforts by the authorities of the former Government to investigate, let alone ensure accountability for, any of the serious violations and abuses committed by security forces and Awami League supporters,’ said the report published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on February 12.

The report also observes that even though Bangladesh’s domestic laws required probe into the security forces’ use of firearms during the protests, former senior officials confirmed that no investigations into the matter were conducted.

In line with the international human rights law, Bangladesh is under an obligation to provide effective remedies for the serious human rights violations attributable to the state, including by ensuring criminal accountability, providing prompt, adequate and effective reparation to the victims of state violations and ensuring that such violations will not recur, according to the OHCHR.

 ‘Extrajudicial killings, other unlawful taking of life, torture, sexual violence and other serious human rights violations and abuses must be subject to independent, impartial, prompt, thorough, effective, credible, and transparent investigation capable of leading to the prosecution of identified perpetrators, it said.

The report mentions that such investigations must be initiated irrespective of whether the victim or their family issued a complaint (ex officio), adding that whenever state officials use firearms or cause death or serious injury in a law enforcement situation, this must also be duly investigated ex officio, irrespective of whether unlawfulness of conduct is specifically alleged.

It mentions that allegations of torture and serious ill treatment were not investigated either.

The UN report said that the foreign ministry forwarded information about violations received from international human rights organisations to the Prime Minister’s Office and also to the home ministry.

The report mentioned about Hasina’s announcement of the establishment of a judicial inquiry headed by three judges, while blaming all the incidents on ‘opposition instigators’ and ‘terrorists.’

The inquiry was assigned to investigate the ‘incidents of death, violence, vandalism, arson, looting, terrorist activity and damages caused by the quota reform movement,’ suggesting an exclusive and one-sided focus on the acts of protesters alone, leaving to one side the much more widespread violence of the security forces.

Moreover, testimonies by a former senior government official and another official confirmed that this judicial inquiry never even issued an interim report or findings, nor left behind any other record of its activities when it stopped functioning on August 5.

Rather than taking steps towards ensuring accountability, the authorities appeared instead to have made coordinated efforts to suppress the truth about violations that had occurred. DGFI, NSI, Detective Branch, and other police forces maintained a presence at hospitals where many victims were treated and also confiscated records with important evidentiary value from them, the report states.

‘In some cases, police also took bodies from hospitals, hid bodies from families or burned bodies in an apparent effort to conceal killings. In some cases, projectiles were removed from the bodies of victims in the hospital and handed over to police officers without any record of their provenance,’ according to the report.

The OHCHR also received information about the police and Rapid Action Battalion units being given unrecorded allotments of ammunition, so that their extensive volume of shooting would not be picked up in ammunition expenditure accounts.

Notably, hundreds of people were wrongly accused and arrested in connection with the emblematic case of the killing of Abu Sayed, even though widely circulating video footage and other information made it evident that police had killed him.

In relation to cases of evident killings and injuries caused by the security forces, the then prime minister and other senior officials also made public statements falsely accusing Bangladesh Nationalist Party or Jamaat-e-Islami members.

‘Based on a thorough analysis of all the information laid out in this report, OHCHR has reasonable grounds to believe that, between 15 July and 5 August, the former Government and its security and intelligence apparatus, in coordination with violent elements linked to the Awami League, systematically engaged in serious human rights violations and abuses,’ the report revealed.

The National Human Rights Commission, within its own mandate, also failed to hold authorities accountable for human rights violations and protect victims.

The report, however, mentioned that the interim government had committed itself to ensuring accountability for serious violations. 

Conducted at the invitation of the interim government chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus, the UN investigation into rights violations from July 1, 2024 to August 15, 2024 revealed that the ousted prime minister and Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, herself ordered security forces to kill protesters and hide their bodies to quell the student-led protests in July.