UN has no magical lamp to solve the crisis, says Bachelet
Muktadir Rashid, Dhaka: A group of rights activists, lawyers, and development workers on Monday met visiting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and briefed her about their experiences in protecting human rights in Bangladesh over the years amid concerns over enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and custodial torture.
In the meeting that lasted around two hours at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Dhaka, they also expressed their concerns over the abuse of the Digital Security Act, the poor state of press freedom, and the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.
‘We demanded a fair investigation under UN supervision to find our disappeared family members,’ Sanjida Islam Tulee, cofounder of Mayer Daak, a platform of the families of enforced disappearance victims, told New Age after the meeting.
At least 613 people were victims of enforced disappearance between January 2009 and March 2022, and many of them were found killed, arrested, in jail or released, according to Bangladeshi rights group Odhikar.
New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch said that the whereabouts of 86 enforced disappeared victims, mostly politicians, were unknown.
At the meeting, one of the participants called for setting up an investigation mechanism in Bangladesh under the mandate of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate the cases of enforced disappearances as the UN did in Sri Lanka.
In accordance with the 2014 mandate, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights established the OHCHR investigation on Sri Lanka based in Geneva, and the period under investigation was from February 21, 2002, until November 15, 2011.
The participant said that an independent and impartial investigation involving senior judicial and civil society members and the UN special rapporteur should be formed to investigate the enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
The participant called on the UN rights commissioner to take measures to shut down a secret detention centre allegedly operated by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Another participant said that they discussed the deteriorating criminal justice delivery system and the influence of different government security agencies in the decision-making process.
The participants also discussed the rights situation in the Chattogram Hill Tracts and how the country’s successive national elections were held.
They also said violence against women, and ethnic and religious minorities was alarming.
Environmental lawyer Syeda Rizwana Hasan, whose husband was a victim of enforced disappearance in Narayanganj in 2014 reportedly for her work, told New Age that they discussed the electoral process in Bangladesh, the justice delivery system, and the state of press freedom.
‘The High Commissioner told us that the UN has no magical lamp to solve the crisis overnight, but engagement can improve the situation,’ she added.
Another participant said that they discussed in separate meetings the prime issues of human rights concerns in Bangladesh, including enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killing.
The participant said that they explained how the Digital Security Act is being misused in Bangladesh to suppress dissenting voices.
They also discussed how human rights defenders and journalists are being harassed and intimidated for their work and on Rohingya issues.
On the second day of her four-day visit, Bachelet also paid tribute to the mural of the country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the occasion of National Mourning Day before travelling to Cox’s Bazar to visit Rohingya camps.
In the first-ever visit by a UN rights chief to Bangladesh, Bachelet arrived in Dhaka in the morning of Sunday and held meetings with foreign, law, home, and education ministers who defended the government’s actions.
