86 victims of enforced disappearance still missing in Bangladesh: HRW
The US-based organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) reminded Bangladesh about 86 victims of enforced disappearance whose whereabouts are still not traced.
While issuing a press release on its new report on Monday, HRW urged the United Nations to lead an independent international investigation into enforced disappearances by security forces in Bangladesh.
HRW prepared the 57-page report–‘Where No Sun Can Enter’: A Decade of Enforced Disappearances in Bangladesh–based on over 115 interviews conducted between July 2020 and March 2021 with victims, their family members, and witnesses to enforced disappearances.
The report urged senior UN officials, donors, and trade partners to step up measures to hold Bangladesh security forces’ senior members accountable, stop enforced disappearances, and prevent future abuses.
The report finds that, despite credible and consistent evidence that Bangladesh security forces routinely commit enforced disappearances, the ruling Awami League has ignored calls by donor governments, the UN, human rights organisations, and civil society to address the culture of impunity.
Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW, said, “Awami League leadership and Bangladesh authorities mock victims and routinely obstruct investigations, making clear that the government has no intention of meaningfully addressing enforced disappearances by its security forces.”
He added, “As critics of the government live in fear of being forcibly disappeared, and families of the disappeared have little hope of getting justice from the government, UN human rights experts should open an investigation into enforced disappearances in Bangladesh.”
The HRW report said although security forces in Bangladesh have long committed grave human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial executions, including under previous governments, enforced disappearances in particular have become a ‘hallmark’ of the incumbent government.
According to Bangladeshi human rights organisations, nearly 600 people have been forcibly disappeared by security forces since 2009. While some victims have been released or produced in court after weeks or months of secret detention, others became victims of extrajudicial killings that are falsely claimed to be deaths during gunfights.
The Bangladesh government consistently denies that its security forces commit enforced disappearances. Victims’ families repeatedly described outright refusal by the police and other security forces to file a case or conduct a legitimate investigation of alleged enforced disappearances.
HRW said that the elite force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) is responsible for more enforced disappearances in Bangladesh. Describing RAB as a ‘death squad’, human rights organisations have repeatedly called for RAB to be disbanded, the report said.
“The UN Department of Peace Operations should ban the RAB from peacekeeping and the US should bring individual human rights sanctions against Bangladesh commanders implicated in serious crimes like torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings,” Brad Adams said in the press release.
Citing that 10 US senators published a bipartisan letter in October 2020 calling for sanctions against top RAB officials for extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, and torture, the HRW release said, “The United States, UK, Canada, the EU, and other governments with similar human rights sanctions regimes should impose targeted sanctions on the responsible RAB officials.”