Mir Afroz Zaman

The Interim Government of Bangladesh has not yet been able to provide the UN team with any information on the human rights violations committed against students and the public in July and August that the anti-discrimination student movement and Islamic parties are claiming. There has also been no response regarding the security forces.

The UN investigation team has visited Bangladesh twice at the invitation of the interim government.

In this regard, a high-ranking UN official said that the current interim government invited them to investigate the human rights violations against students and the public in July-August. Although the issue is said to be one of the government's priorities, it has been observed that there is an inability to provide information on crimes and many criminals, which is not at all desirable.

He also said that due to this, the investigation team is not able to complete the report. However, work is underway to complete it again by mid-January. The report will also be incomplete due to the lack of complete information. In addition, information about the shooting by the police and RAB has not been provided.

However, there has been some delay in providing information to the UN as requested, admitted Tawfiq Hasan, Director General and Spokesperson of the UN Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He said, the information sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the relevant departments and divisions, including the Ministry of Home Affairs, based on the request of the fact-finding mission, has been provided to the UN Human Rights Commission office.

The fact-finding team conducts its investigation in accordance with the accepted procedures of the UN. They also follow international human rights and other legal processes. They protect the utmost confidentiality of the evidence they collect. The UN High Commission for Human Rights delegation wanted to analyze the root causes of the atrocities in Bangladesh from July 1 to August 15 and provide recommendations to prevent the recurrence of such incidents in the future and submit a full report in early December. But that did not happen.

At the invitation of the interim government, three members of the High Commission for Human Rights came to Dhaka in late August for a preliminary investigation. They informed the government about how they would work and what cooperation would be required. At the same time, they discussed the investigation process after learning about Bangladesh's needs. After that, the main investigation team came to Dhaka in September. After touring different districts for four weeks, he returned with field-level information and data.

From July 1, students have been peacefully protesting against the quota reform movement in government jobs in Dhaka University TSC premises and Shahbagh area. But Sheikh Hasina, in the meantime, ended her China tour and called a press conference at Ganabhaban on July 15. At that time, in response to a heated question from two journalists, Sheikh Hasina said that all those who are protesting against the quota reform movement are the children of Razakars. Will the children of freedom fighters not get government jobs, but the children of Razakars will?

Because of such statements, Dhaka University started getting heated from that afternoon and later the police showed great activity to suppress the movement, especially the Metropolitan Detective Chief Harunor Rasid and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner at that time Habibur Rahman. But in suppressing the movement, especially at the end of July and until August 2, there is no such information from the media that any student died in firing. But on August 2, a virtual meeting of JOCs from all over the country was held at the Dhaka Cantonment. It is known that Sheikh Hasina's fate was decided in that meeting. The movement began to strengthen from August 3.

The movement continued until August 4. Even though the police and RAB were active at this time, the fact that so many students, including ordinary people, died in the firing remains a mystery. On August 5, the tide of millions of people breaking the dam began from the morning. Until 12 noon, the media could not even guess that Sheikh Hasina was leaving the country. The next day, it was learned that Sheikh Hasina had fled, which was revealed in the press conference of the army chief.

The BNP, the anti-discrimination student movement and Islamic parties started claiming that about 2,000 students were killed. But until now, no accurate account of human rights violations and deaths has been found, nor has anyone been able to provide accurate information to the UN investigation team.