Sheikh Hasina ordered indiscriminate shooting: UN report

To remain in power, the former government's prime minister Sheikh Hasina ordered to suppress the protests of student-people with increasingly violent means.

Former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal also aided her in a range of serious human rights violations during last year’s student-led protests, a report by the UN Human Rights Office has found.

Drawing on testimony of senior officials and other evidence, it also found an official policy to attack and violently repress anti-government protesters and sympathisers, raising concerns as to crimes against humanity requiring urgent further criminal investigation. 

Based on deaths reported by various credible sources, the report estimates that as many as 1,400 people may have been killed between 1 July and 15 August, and thousands were injured, the vast majority of whom were shot by Bangladesh’s security forces.  Of these, the report indicates that as many as 12-13 per cent of those killed were children. Bangladesh Police reported that 44 of its officers were killed.

The protests were triggered by the High Court’s decision to reinstate a quota system in public service jobs but were rooted in much broader grievances arising from destructive and corrupt politics and governance that had entrenched economic inequalities. 

The report found patterns of security forces deliberately and impermissibly killing or maiming protesters, including incidents where people were shot at point-blank range.

The report examined in detail the emblematic case of Abu Sayed, among others, who was filmed shouting “shoot me” at police with his arms spread wide apart at a protest at Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur. Using video footage, images and geolocation technology, investigators reconstructed his killing to corroborate testimonies of how it occurred. A forensic analysis concluded his injuries were consistent with his having been shot at least twice with shotguns loaded with metal pellets, from a distance of about 14 metres. The report concludes there are reasonable grounds to believe that Abu Sayed was the victim of a deliberate extrajudicial killing by the police.

Having been at the forefront of the early protests, women, including protest leaders, were also subjected to arbitrary arrests, torture, ill-treatment and attacks by security forces and Awami League supporters. The report documents gender-based violence, including physical assaults and threats of rape, aimed at deterring women from participating in protests.

The report provides a detailed set of recommendations to reform the security and justice sectors, abolish a host of repressive laws and institutions designed to stifle civic and political dissent and implement broader changes to the political system and economic governance.