DHAKA, Feb 12, 2025 (BSS) - Bangladesh’s ousted Sheikh Hasina’s government and security and intelligence services, alongside violent elements associated with Awami League party, systematically engaged in a range of serious human rights violations during the 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,” read a UN Human Rights office press release.    
 
Of these, the report indicates that as many as 12-13 percent of those killed were children. Bangladesh Police reported that 44 of its officers were killed, said the report. 

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. 

To remain in power, the former government tried systematically to suppress these protests with increasingly violent means, the report found. 

“The brutal response was a calculated and well-coordinated strategy by the former government to hold onto power in the face of mass opposition,” said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk at a press briefing held in Geneva today while releasing the report.  
  
He said there are reasonable grounds to believe hundreds of extrajudicial killings, extensive arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture, were carried out with the knowledge, coordination and direction of the political leadership and senior security officials as part of a strategy to suppress the protests. 

 “The testimonies and evidence we gathered paint a disturbing picture of rampant State violence and targeted killings, that are amongst the most serious violations of human rights, and which may also constitute international crimes. Accountability and justice are essential for national healing and for the future of Bangladesh,” he added.

At the request of the Chief Advisor Professor Dr Mohammed Yunus, the UN Human Rights Office in September dispatched a team to Bangladesh, including human rights investigators, a forensics physician and a weapons expert, to conduct an independent and impartial fact finding into the deadly events.

The interim government extended significant cooperation with the inquiry, granted the access that was requested, and provided substantial documentation, UN Human Rights office said.  

“Former senior officials directly involved in handling the protests and other inside sources described how the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and other senior officials directed and oversaw a series of large-scale operations, in which security and intelligence forces shot and killed protesters or arbitrarily arrested and tortured them,” read the release.  

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, said the release.  

Using video footage, images and geolocation technology, investigators reconstructed his killing to corroborate testimonies of how it occurred. 

The report mentioned that 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 concluded 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, the report said, women, including protest leaders, were also subjected to arbitrary arrests, torture and ill-treatment and attacks by security forces and Awami League supporters. 

The report documented gender-based violence, including physical assaults and threats of rape, aimed at deterring women from participating in protests.

It also found that police and other security forces killed and maimed children, and subjected them to arbitrary arrest, detention in inhumane conditions and torture. 

In one of several deadly cases documented, a 12-year-old protester in Dhanmondi died from internal bleeding caused by some 200 metal shot pellets, the report found.  

Also among those killed were very young children who were brought by their parents to protests, or who were shot as bystanders, it added.  

The report found that in one case in Narayanganj, a six-year-old girl was killed by a bullet to the head while standing on the roof of her building observing violent clashes at a protest. 

“On 5 August – the final and one of the deadliest days of the protests –  a 12-year-old boy who was shot by the police in Azampur recalled that police were ‘firing everywhere like rainfall’. He described seeing at least a dozen dead bodies,” the report said on the account of eyewitness.  

The report also documented cases in which security forces denied or obstructed critical medical care for injured protesters while they interrogated patients and collected their fingerprints in hospitals, intimidated medical personnel, and seized hospital CCTV footage without due process.

These actions appeared to be part of an effort to identify protesters and conceal evidence of the extent of violence by state forces, it added. 

The report also provided 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.  

“The best way forward for Bangladesh is to face the horrific wrongs committed during this period, through a comprehensive process of truth-telling, healing and accountability, and to redress the legacy of serious human rights violations and ensure they can never happen again,” High Commissioner Volker Turk said. 

“My Office stands ready to assist in this vital national accountability and reform process,” he added.