THE new government that would be installed this evening should establish legal liability for victims of extrajudicial killing, custodial death, torture and enforced disappearances done during the authoritarian Awami League regime for a meaningful political transformation in the days to come. Rights organisations say that security forces have been responsible for more than 600 enforced disappearances since 2009. While some people were later released, produced in court, or said to have died in an armed exchange with security forces, about 100 people remain missing. Mayer Daak, a platform of members of the families of enforced disappearance victims, has already put out for a safe return of their loved ones. When a co-founder of Mayer Daak met the Director General of Forces Intelligence along with the UN resident coordinator on August 6, the intelligence agency assured that they would come up with an update on people held in secret detention centres, often referred to as Aynaghar. The agency on August 7 told a rights defenders鈥� delegation that it would form a joint commission to inspect 23 other facilities to see if any enforced disappearance victims were there.
The authorities should remain true to the word and immediately form the commission to reveal the truth of the illegal detention of political prisoners, mostly from the opposition, during the Awami League rule. At least three victims of enforced disappearance have, meanwhile, reappeared in Dhaka and Chattogram. A former brigadier general Abdullahil Aman Azmi and Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem, younger son of the executed Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali, were released on August 6. The two had been held inside the Dhaka cantonment, allegedly by intelligence forces, during the tenure of the deposed prime minister. An ethnic minority rights activist affiliated with the United People鈥檚 Democratic Front also reappeared in Chattogram on August 7 after he had been picked up by plainclothes men from Narayanganj in April 2019. The return confirms the long-denied allegation of enforced disappearances and that the Awami League systematically allowed law enforcement and security forces to use enforced disappearances as a tool to suppress political opposition and create a climate of fear. Despite repeated calls from national and international rights organisations, no credible investigation of the allegation of the abuse of power and illegal detention by law enforcers has taken place.
The authorities must, therefore, immediately form the commission and consider involving jurists and rights defenders to ensure its integrity and credibility, publish a full list of enforced disappearance victims and bring the errant law enforcers to justice for enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killing and custodial torture. The interim government must also consider forming an independent body to review political apparatuses of repression used in such gross violations of rights and to recommend preventive steps.