Bangladesh struggles with human rights after Sheikh Hasina fled, says rights body
Hasina fled Bangladesh on August 5, 2024, following five weeks of protests which killed 1,400 people, according to the UN.
The interim Bangladesh government of Mohammed Yunus is falling short in implementing its challenging human rights agenda, a year since tens of thousands of people took to the streets to successfully depose their authoritarian government, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday.
On July 16, violence involving security forces and supporters of Hasina's now-banned Awami League killed five people in the town of Gopalganj.(Reuters)
Some of the fear and repression that marked Sheikh Hasina's Awami League Party's 15-year rule, and abuses such as widespread enforced disappearances, appear to have ended. However, the interim government has used arbitrary detention to target perceived political opponents and has yet to deliver systemic reforms to protect human rights, HRW said in a statement.
The hope of the thousands who braved lethal violence a year ago when they opposed Sheikh Hasina's abusive rule to build a rights-respecting democracy remains unfulfilled," said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
The interim government appears stuck, juggling an unreformed security sector, sometimes violent religious hardliners, and political groups that seem more focused on extracting vengeance on Hasina's supporters than protecting Bangladeshis' rights."
Eleven reform commissions established in 2024, as well as the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and both Bangladeshi and international human rights activists, have submitted detailed recommendations to the interim government that are still pending.