UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : News feature - UN Human Rights report on Bangladesh

The UN Human Rights Office today released a comprehensive, in-depth report on the human rights violations and abuses related to the protests that took place in Bangladesh last year, drawing on over 250 interviews with victims, witnesses, medics and senior officials, as well as individual pieces of digital information. The team also received thousands of submissions from individuals in Bangladesh.

Drawing on these testimonies and other evidence, it found an official policy to attack and violently repress anti-Government protesters and sympathisers, raising concerns as to crimes against humanity requiring urgent further investigation.

At the request of the Chief Advisor of the Interim Government, Mohammed Yunus, the UN Human Rights Office deployed a fact-finding team to Bangladesh in September 2024.

“So, following the student-led protests in Bangladesh, between the 1st of July and 15th of August 2024, it was the interim government itself that requested the deployment of a fact-finding mission to Bangladesh. So, we the UN Human Rights Office, sent this mission from the 16th of September. We deployed a mission that was supported by a forensic physician, weapons expert, gender expert, open-source analyst, among others,” said Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the Office.

“The team visited hotspots, sites of protests including universities. They also visited hospitals. And they visited key areas in different districts of Bangladesh. We also received over 900 submissions from individuals,” she said.

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 to systematically suppress these protests with increasingly violent means, the report finds.

Based on deaths reported by various credible sources, the report estimates that as many as 1,400 people may have been killed between in July and 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 percent of those killed were children. Bangladesh Police reported that 44 of its officers were killed.

Alexander El Jundi, Chief- Investigation Support Section, Human Rights Inquiries Branch, details the methodology used for this report: “In terms of expertise, we need traditional human rights experts and investigators who conduct interviews and look at the information received,” he said.

“This is coupled with digital forensics experts that analyze the digital imagery received, as you can see behind me, with a view to verifying the information received by the investigators and the human rights investigations,”he added.

The Interim Government extended significant cooperation with the inquiry, granted the access that was requested, and provided substantial documentation.

Former senior officials directly involved in handling the protests and other inside sources described how the former Prime Minister and other sector 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.

“And here you will see imagery of some of the protests that occurred in July and August 2024, captured from various angles. So, you see how we have zoomed in on certain key areas here. For example, here we have a shooter, and [we are] trying to triangulate and cross-check the information to see exactly what happened and to verify information that was received from witnesses, victims and information providers,” El Jundi said.

El Jundi added: “We also have specialist expertise. We have a forensic pathologist who was able to go to hospitals and to speak to doctors and other medical workers as well as victims. And even more importantly, examine medical records and look at imagery of bodies and on people's wounds to ascertain the mode of injury, the mode of death, and to build on a story.”

Önder Özkalıpcı, the mission’s forensic pathologist, visited hospitals and examined X-rays of the wounded and deceased.

“One of the key things was the very wide use of shotguns for demonstration control,” he said.

“Which was also confirmed by different hospital directors that shotguns were used, were aimed above the waist to the chest and to heads of the persons. So, over several hundred eye injuries were declared by the head of the Ophthalmic Institute in Dhaka,” Önder Özkalıpcı stated.

“Coupled with this, also having a weapons expert, a weapons expert that was able tointeract with security forces, and also to look at digital images such as this, to look at the weaponry used, to look at the rules of engagement, how the security forces were behaving on the ground, and to look at the remnants of the bullets for example,” said El Jundi.

David Lochhead, the report’s weapons expert, reviewed open-source information collected by the team before the fact-finding mission was deployed. He examined video and photographic evidence, as well as various reports, to help establish the types of weapons and those who used them.

“Well of course we're looking at issues related to lawful use of force against largely unarmed civilians by different types of security forces. So, you know, understanding how the security forces themselves consider their roles and their functions and their powers in a crowd control situations is very important,” Lochhead said.

“Understanding what their doctrine is and the tactics that they employ. You know, the way that they describe it to us, which type of weapons are they authorized to use according to their own regulations in certain situations? All of that is important contextual information to understand. And then looking at the physical evidence, you can start to see, where certain types of weapons were employed, certain types of ammunition in those weapons, and the impacts that they had on, on people, on property,” he said.

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

“Based on the work of the team we found that Bangladesh’s former Government and security intelligence services, alongside violent elements associated with the Awami League, systematically engaged in a range of serious human rights violations. The testimonies and the evidence that we gathered paint a disturbing picture of rampant State violence, targeted killings that are among the most serious violations of human rights and which may also constitute international crimes,” said Shamdasani, the UN Human Rights chief spokesperson.

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.

ENDS

For more information and media requests, please contact:

Ravina Shamdasani: +41 22 917 9169 / ravina.shamdasani@un.org

Jeremy Laurence: +41 22 917 9383 / jeremy.laurence@un.org

Thameen Al-Kheetan: +41 22 917 4232 / thameen.alkheetan@un.org

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