Deposed govt started mobilising militarised forces well before protest turned violent: UN

The ousted government started mobilising militarised forces even before the July-August 2024 protests turned violent, said the UN rights office (OHCHR) in its fact finding report on right violation and abuses last year in Bangladesh.

“Well before the protests generalized and related violent unrest erupted, government had already been deploying heavily armed paramilitary forces from RAB, BGB, and Ansar/VDP Battalions, with an apparent intention of militarising its response and using ever more lethal force,” it read.

The report said serious rights violations and abuses committed by security forces and armed Awami League supporters from July 15 to August 5 “stemmed from a calculated effort to retain power at all costs, by employing unlawful means to repress the protests”.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released on February 12 the report titled “Human Rights Violations and Abuses related to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh”.

It said from the early days of July the then government and Awami League leadership considered that the protest movement had been “infiltrated” by its political opposition and understood that the protests could become a serious political threat to the unpopular government’s continued hold on power.

The report said several days before her “razakar remarks” the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina privately and publicly signalled that she would take a hard-line approach indifferent ways including by appointing the feared DGFI military intelligence agency as the interface with the student movement.

It said senior government officials and Awami League leaders publicly echoed the approach and started to delegitimize and intimidate the student protesters, “laying the ground for the violations that followed”.

The report said from mid-July the former government and the Awami League mobilised a continuously expanding circle of armed actors, who used increasingly violent means to suppress the protest movement through systematic serious human rights violations and abuses.

According to the report these actions resulted in hundreds of extrajudicial killings, injuries of thousands more and infliction of extensive arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and other forms of ill-treatment.

The OHCHR said the initial effort to suppress protests consisted of brutal attacks by armed Chhatra League activists against male and female students exercising their right of peaceful assembly on and around university premises while these attacks were orchestrated and incited by senior Awami League leaders and several government ministers.

It recounted that drawing on offensive terminology introduced by the then premier regarding the protesters the Chhatra League President publicly pledged that no ‘razakar will be on the streets’ from July 15, and he gave a ‘directive’ to Chhatra League and other party activists to deal with the student protesters.

“Obaidul Quader, Awami League’s second highest official and a senior government minister, reinforced the call for violence. Three other ministers made inciting statements branding the students as traitors and razakars who no longer had the right to protest,” the report read.

It said armed Awami League supporters continued to launch attacks on protesters, jointly or in alignment with the state security forces as the protests continued and in some cases parliament members and state officials led the attacks.

“While helicopters sought to intimidate protesters from above, the police and RAB on the ground used disproportionate force, especially by shooting military rifles and shotguns loaded with lethal ammunition at protesters who were often trying to block roads but did not present an imminent threat of death or serious injury.”

The report said as a result of the actions “many protesters felt compelled to defend themselves”.

“Some elements in the crowds also initiated unlawful violence targeting government buildings, transport infrastructure and police, to which the government responded with the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of firearms,” the OHCHR observed.